2001: A Space Odyssey

Dir: Stanley Kubrick, 1968 (10*)

AFI Top 100

[Updated: 12.31.11]

This groundbreaking SciFi epic was the first to feature totally realistic space effects, and changed forever the way SF films looked. The story, by Arthur C. Clarke, was written for this film because Kubrick wanted to film his incredible novel A Childhood's End, which could not be filmed at the time with existing technology. That book, and this film, are about the next step in the evolution of mankind, from a material to a spiritual being. The previous step, from animal intelligence to human intelligence, is shown in the beginning to give us a major clue, so its surprising that so many people are still baffled by this movie, which has only 20 minutes of dialogue and encourages us to think - what a concept!

Kubrick's film would have been even better had he been able to get phenomena filmmaker Jordan Belson to work on it, but he refused to ever work on commercial films. Belson makes short animated films about things like the birth of a star, or motion through space. All his short films are in the permanent archives at the Museum of Modern Art, and are much better than anything put into commercial SF films. At film festivals, these short films of 3-8 minutes always get standing ovations. Kubrick did make planets and spaceships finally look realistic together, and forever changed the way science fiction films looked going forward. It would be another 10 yrs before Star Wars, but all the action adventure space films that followed looked the way they did because of 2001, so in that regard it was highly influential on the entire industry. Not exactly an exciting film, it was nevertheless a visionary film, and for its time, like nothing else that had ever been filmed.

The sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, attempts to explain the story further, a story which really needed no filmed postscript. That became more of an action film, with much more human interaction between Americans and Russian in a joint venture to activate the spaceship Discovery, and also check out Jupiter from closer range. Worth seeing, and well-done. Clarke himself wrote a third novel in the series as well, 2040, that has not yet been filmed, real SF fans should read the entire trilogy.

Ranked #1 at the Criterion networking film site, The Auteurs, with over 100,000 members.

Note: it's very similar to the parable of Jesus - it's about the birth of a spiritual being, not a corporal one. The awakening of one's spiritual self is a 'virgin birth' that doesn't involve procreation. In 2001, this is symbolized by the floating embryo at the end, a metaphor for the astronaut now being a spiritual being. In Clarke's novel Childhood's End, this happened to the entire race beginning with the current generation of children, so the adults were living out the last physical lives on earth, or the end of the childhood of mankind.

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The Third Man

Carole Reed, 1949, bw (8.6*)
Grand Jury Prize, Cannes
[Our 800th film review]

Classic mystery-suspense film from an often overlooked director, who also directed the classic films Odd Man Out, the Oscar®-winning best picture Oliver! (1967), and my favorite, Joseph Conrad’s Outcast of the Islands, a moody and emotional existential drama about white men among tropical Pacific islanders in a hard to reach eden surrounded by ocean reefs.

In this story based on a Graham Greene novel, Joseph Cotton travels to post-war Vienna after hearing of the death of a friend, Harry Lyme (Orson Welles). In his search for exactly what happened, he begins to uncover a web of deceit, and perhaps finds out more than he bargains for when first starting out.

Beautifully shot in noirish black-and-white, it features a chase in the sewers that is reminiscent of that in the novel (and subsequent films) Les Miserables. I can’t reveal too much without spoiling an important part of the mystery for new viewers.

Probably the only negative here for me is the incessant zither music that is more akin to an outdoor café in Istanbul than a mystery – I found it totally intruding on the suspense of the film and also totally unnecessary, not adding anything positive to the experience of this film.

It’s a odd choice, as the only other music I remember in any Reed film was in the actual musical Oliver!, in which someone had the crazy idea of setting Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist as a Broadway musical! (“One boy, one boy for sale!”) It worked in a bizarre modern psychosis kind of way, but did win a directing Oscar for Reed himself, long overdue for better films. Still, all his work is worth seeing, he’s a master.

This is now 23rd all-time on our top 1000 in our 2011 update of the Top Ranked 1000 Films on the Net, all polls, and is #68 on the IMDB top 250 (so the critics liked it even more than the public, it's higher on our compendium of polls).This was the Grand Prize winner at Cannes, and won an Oscar® for the cinematography of Robert Krasker.

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Bicycle Thieves

Ladri di biciclette
Vittorio De Sica, Italy, (1949) bw (9.2*)
Best Foreign Film (AA, GG)
Best Film (BAA)
In this hallmark film of Italian post-war realism, former actor Vittorio De Sica used all amateur actors and a street realism style with stunning results. De Sica presents probably the most uncompromising and least hopeful of film stories, the film is so depressing that I've had a hard time recommending it here.

The story is a simple one, a poor Italian man, played by factory worker Lamberto Maggiorani, with a young boy gets a job posting film signs only because he has a bicycle. But like most material objects in harsh economic conditions, it gets stolen. Now the man has no bicycle to get to his job, therefore it threatens his job as well. This bicycle becomes the holy grail of this man's life and of this film.

De Sica and the other post-war realists didn't believe in the make-believe world presented by films prior to the war. Rather than escape from reality, they sought to bring the harsh reality of everyday life to the filmgoing public, perhaps with the hope that by raising awareness of the plight of some, people will be angered enough to work to make those conditions more dignified.

It's hard not to be moved by this film. Considered by many one of the finest films ever made, it certainly should be near the top of most polls. No. 85 on the IMDB 250, No. 16 on our compendium of all film polls so it's apparent that critics rank this film a much higher than the general public.

Winner of 16 awards (out of 17 nominations), including an Oscar® and Golden Globe for best foreign language film, and a British academy award (BAFTA) for best overall film.

Note: growing up, this film was always "The Bicycle Thief" - I'm not sure when or why it became plural, but I'm using the title used at IMDB

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Touch of Evil

Orson Welles, 1958, bw (8.3*)

Whether you love Welles or not, you have to admit that this is one unique and bizarre crime film. True to classic noir, this one also has its seminal scenes at night, in fact most of the action is in the dark, like the souls of many in this film. It's a dark and almost dreary film, but that's true of much of classic noir.

Charlton Heston is Mike Vargas, a Mexican narcotics officer, whose honeymoon to Janet Leigh is interrupted by a murder in a border town that happens after someone places a bomb in the trunk of a car on the Mexican side of the border that then drives back across, while on the same street. Vargas is soon dealing with the police chief on the U.S. side, a long-time corrupted Hank Quinlan, to whom his law is 'the law', played with cynical gusto by Orson Welles. Quinlan is all too ready to convict an innocent Mexican-American, but Vargas begins probing into his checkered past.

Meanwhile his wife Susie (Leigh) is not only out of danger at a seedy motel, but right in the middle; this part is inexplicably broken up by a sudden comic appearance by Dennis Weaver as the dumbfounded but pruriently interested hotel clerk, in one of the more bizarre performances in cinema history.

This examines racism along the Mexican border as well as police corruption, and does it in classic film noir dark palette and lighting, with hardly a character you'd want to know personally, even Heston's, for he wouldn't last long in the real world by diving into the fire. More than a clash of individual personalities and ethics, it becomes an inter-racial and cross-cultural statement on mutual cooperation and understanding.

Those interested in Welles should by all means see Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Touch of Evil is No. 125 on the IMDB 250, and is No. 30 on our compendium of all film polls - so it's obviously ranked much higher by critics than the public.

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M.

Fritz Lang, 1931, bw (9.0*)
No. 11 on our compendium of all polls, No. 55 on the IMDB 250
M. is the classic Fritz Lang suspense thriller in which someone is murdering children in a German city, the police can't catch him, and the manhunt is so intense that it's interrupting all the normal crime, so even criminals enlist in the killer's search.

Peter Lorre is the psychotic serial killer, in a chilling performance, one that put him on the map as a creepy actor that can sell a sociopathic character. Lang did a great job capturing both the uneasiness and the complexity of the characters, as well as creating the atmospheric mood with lighting and cinematography, characteristic trademarks of German expressionism. Lang is more interested in the effects of the killings on the town than the actual crimes.

Like Murnau (Sunrise, The Last Laugh, Nosferatu) and Pabst (Pandora's Box), Lang is a must-see for fans of early cinema, particularly German, and before they came to Hollywood, which makes M. essential viewing as well. His 1926 masterpiece, Metropolis, is the most famous and significant early science fiction film, the same can be said for this film in the genre of crime.

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Diabolique

aka Les Diaboliques
Henri-Georges Clouzot, France, 1955, bw (8.7*)
In this classic French suspense film, Michel (Paul Meurisse), the principal of a boarding school for boys has a wife Nicole (Simone Signoret), and a mistress Christina (Vera Clouzot, the Brazilian wife of the director), who are both teachers at the school. Michel is abusive, and his wife convinces the mistress to help her murder him.

Things go well at first, and like most crime films, things start to go wrong. First the husband's body goes missing, and then a retired police inspector shows up who is determined to help Nicole find her missing husband. He seems to be interested in Nicole himself, so he won't leave her alone.

This film is pretty Hitchcockian in its own way, it's just missing his trademark humor and brevity. This film doesn't spend much time developing the plot, it dives right in. It's actually more sophisticated than most murder films; it's more psychological than pathological, and displays more suspense (and no gore) than American murder films. It was actually poorly remade here with Sharon Stone, but I would definitely skip that poor imitation.

Diabolique is No. 182 on the IMDB 250, and won 3 awards. Director Clouzot directed the classic The Wages of Fear, also The Raven, made at the end of World War II, about a poison pen letter writer in a small town. Each of these films is a classic in its own way.

Véra Clouzot and Simone Signoret in Diabolique

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The King's Speech

Tom Hooper, 2010 (7.8*)
In spite of a stellar cast, and all the awards it's now won for best picture of 2010, this is primarily a boring, one-trick pony of a film with little real drama, since we already know the outcome (well, except for the history illiterates - this is basic World War Two history, everyone should know it by now).

Colin Firth plays Prince Albert (of England, naturally), who is being forced by his father, King George V, to give public addresses in spite of his public stutter (or is it stammer? he doesn't start a word over and over, he pauses and has a hard time continuing, so there are lengthy silences that try everyone's patience). His wife, Helena Bonham Carter, who earns perhaps the easiest Oscar® nomination of her career for supporting, seeks the help of a speech therapist, Geoffrey Rush (who also executive produced, and who also had an easy part for an Oscar® nomination), an emigre from Australia who had success with World War One battle victims, including those who lost their voice after gas attacks.

Rush proceeds to give the future King George VI a series of unorthodox speech lessons, which unfortunately comprise about 2/3 of this film. Jaw loosening babbling, rolling on the floor, screaming obscenities, other inane treatments. The other 1/3 is the more interesting - how his brother David (Guy Pearce, in perhaps the most interesting role in the film, but they waste the opportunity) first took the throne after George V's death, but then refused to give up an affair with a divored American woman and was forced to abdicate the throne, thus making Prince Albert the new King George.

The only real life in this film is when Michael Gambon is onscreen as the irascible old king, who yells at "Bertie", as the family calls him, "Out with it man! Like a good Englishman", as if berating and yelling at a stutterer will suddenly snap him out of it, like an army recruit at boot camp. Gambon plays the 'old school' style of monarch, the sword-bearing, duel-fighting type of soldier from un-mechanized centuries of war, and certain things royalty just didn't do, such as stutter, fail to bear whatever comes, fool around, or get divorced.

Well done technically, with an excellent, though pretty much untaxed cast (only Firth had to do much, and all he did was change his speech rhythms, and get slightly angry once or twice, but little else - a pretty easy Oscar if you ask me), this is only going to be interesting to history buffs, Anglophiles, and those who still think the motion picture academy chooses the best films for awards. It's obvious from this choice and Crash in 2006 that there's some behind the scenes wrangling going on, with favors called in, studio block voting and perhaps 'teams' formed, etc.. it's like any other politics, the winners aren't often based on merit, but how many votes that side can muster.

King's Speech won 47 awards out of 137 nominations, including four Oscars® (Picture, director, actor, screenplay). It's now ranked #103 on the IMDB top 250 (but well behind Inception at #6, Toy Story 3 at #33, and even lower than Black Swan at #73, to compare it with the other big films of 2010. Social Network is #190, but did win 84 awards, far and away the most of 2010).

Not a bad movie, just not a great one either, not worthy of this many awards in a season with better films: Inception (2010), Toy Story 3 (2011), Winter's Bone (2010), The Social Network (2010), Black Swan (2010), Inside Job (2010).

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Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky, 2010 (8.4*)
Natalie Portman is aspiring ballerina Nina Sayers, vying for the lead role in a New York ballet company's season opening performance of Swan Lake. The company's director, Vincent Cassel, is retiring their current star, Wynona Ryder, due to age, and he wants to move into a bold, new direction. He tells Nina she is the perfect white swan, but that her competition, a new dancer named Lily (Mila Kunis) is the perfect black swan, and he needs someone who can be both. He urges Nina to get in touch with her sensual side, which he can't see in her rehearsals, telling her she must become more intuitive, and lose herself in the role, unaware that this may send Nina over the edge in a leap into the void of madness.

Her mother, Barbara Hershey, is a former ballerina herself, who gave it all up to have a child - now she wants to control and dominate Nina, hoping to avoid the mistakes she made. The result is that Nina's entire world is her dancing, she has no lovers, and seems alienated from real human contact and affection altogether. We watch her try to cross this void and literally get in touch with her body, but as she does she descends into a neurotic self-absorption that borders on complete madness. Her desire for success on the stage threatens her tenuous connection to reality. Her fantasies, particularly erotic ones, drive her dancing toward the sensual side that Cassel demands, while at the same time hindering her quest for perfection, which was probably demanded by her mother from an early age. Her move to the dark side also demands a severance from her mother's domination. Like the daugher played by Evan Rachel Wood in Thirteen, her independence and tranformation into adulthood require severing a psychic umbilical that keeps each tied to their mothers; each feels pressured to achieve their mothers' dreams and neglect their own.

Natalie Portman drew on her ballet training from ages 4-13, and resumed training a year before principal filming began, working with former New York City ballet dancer Mary Helen Bowers. Professional ballerinas Sarah Lane and Kimberly Prosa were her dance doubles. Using special effects, Natalie Portman's head was placed on Sarah Lane's body in several scenes. According to interviews with Prosa and Lane, Portman's dance scenes in full body shots were the doubles. Often Portman was shown dancing from the waist up, showing only face and arms. It's questionable how much dancing she actually did, but the result is seamless - we never question the technical aspects as we get lost in the metamorphosis of her character from the light to the dark side.

There are some disturbing images here; as usual, an Aronofsky film is not for the squeamish. There are shots of self-mutilation that will haunt viewers long after the film is complete. Perhaps they are a bit over-the-top, but may have been necessary to show the inner changes to her character. At times, it seems a little Hitchcockian, as if a demented psychotic is struggling to gain control of a professional artist whose entire lifestyle is one of self-control and discipline.

Darren Aronofsky's direction shows in how driven the main characters are in his films; they are always intense, exhausting, and riveting performances to witness. He's gotten career best performances from Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, Rachel Weisz in The Fountain, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, and here from Portman. His style won't ever be as popular as directors who won't take big risks, who rely more on safe, successful formulas. This is much more daring than King's Speech or The Social Network, the two films that won the most awards for best film this year. Neither of those held any surprises, telling historical stories in a typically straighforward manner that guarantees any audience can comprehend their stories. Of those two, I thought Social Network was more interesting (and also had a great music soundtrack); King's Speech just stuttered along (pun intended) with no pace.

Even though this is now ranked #73 on the IMDB top 250, a bit high to me (it will likely fall over time), it only won one award for best film of the year, at the Independent Spirit awards (where it also won for director, actress, and cinematography, while King's Speech only won foreign film there, and wasn't nominated for picture or director). Overall, it won 35 awards out of 124 nominations. Portman won 17 awards for her performance, sweeping all the big ones: Oscar, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, and Golden Globe. Matthew Libatique's cinematography also won several awards.

Note: many complained that Kunis wasn't nominated for supporting actress, but she was bland and uninvolving and didn't deserve any awards. She was totally blown away by veterans Dale Dickey in Winter's Bone (the Indie Spirit winner), and Oscar-nominee Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom. Being young and popular doesn't equate to talent; I've yet to see any real acting from her in anything (I don't even think she's very pretty either, I just don't get all the popularity)

My favorite films from 2010 (so far, with The Fighter still to be seen..): 1-Winter's Bone, 2-Inception, 3-Toy Story 3, 4-Animal Kingdom (Australia), 5-The Social Network, 6-Black Swan, 7-The Tourist, 8-The King's Speech, 9-The Kids Are All Right
[Inception and Toy Story 3 are most likely the ones that will be rewatched the most; I've already gone back and watched Inception again, it's a very complex script]

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Witness For the Prosecution

Billy Wilder, 1957, bw (8.3*)  bw

This is my second favorite film of an Agatha Christie story (this was a short story, not a novel), after And Then There Were None from French director René Clair. I believe this story is unique for her, as it's a legal film, with the entire story unfolding in a courtroom, but it still has the Christie touch, meaning an unexpected plot twist that most can't see coming.

An excellent cast makes this film better than it would have been from the story alone. The impeccable Charles Laughton, a two-time best actor winner, here an aging attorney recovering from a near fatal heart attack, agrees to defend Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) in a murder case, in spite of the fact that his wife, Marlene Dietrich, is going to be a witness for the prosecution. Dietrich turns in one of her best dramatic performances, relying on acting in this film, not her beauty nor her sultry singing.

Though not one of Wilder's best (perhaps a little too 'Hollywood'), such as Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Some Like It Hot (perhaps if it had started with an 's'), or The Apartment, it's still a very good mystery, and a good courtroom drama, and Wilder's only work with Laughton or Dietrich. Fans of Christie, or Laughton, who was one of the best actors ever on film, will not be disappointed.

Nominated for 6 Oscars® (Picture, director, actor for Laughton, supporting for Elsa Lanchester, who won the Golden Globe), 5 Golden Globes, and 5 other awards, and ranked #129 on the IMDB top 250, with a rating of 8.4, the same as I gave it - not quite as high for me as And Then There Were None.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, The Fortune Cookie.

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Oldboy

aka Oldeboi
Chan-wook Park, South Korea, 2003 (8.7*)
I normally prefer films that are visually creative and not such a clear plotline that you know the result half an hour in (ie, Rocky and Star Wars). This very innovative and extremely watchable crime film is actually a sequel to Park's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (and followed by Lady Vengeance, to complete a trilogy), but it stands alone so you needn't see the first film, which isn't nearly the classic of this one.

One might say this is an Asian updating of The Count of Monte Cristo, about a man, Oh Dai-Su, played by Min-sik Choi (winner of a few acting awards), unfairly imprisoned, in this case for 15 years. When he finds his freedom, then sets out to find those responsible and if possible, wreak a little personal vengeance. However, this story has enough surprises and twists to remain unpredictable and entertaining throughout.

Though not for the squeamish (it has some torture and sexuality), it's one of those rare finds that you'll be thinking about long after viewing, and one that will make you want to tell your friends 'hey, check this one out', if you don't mind subtitles.

One of the best Korean films ever, Oldboy is ranked #99 on the IMDB top 250, with an 8.4 rating (but a lesser 74 from Metacritics). Winner of 17 awards out of 27 nominations, most for director Chan-wook Park.

Quote: What I am isn't important; WHY is important.

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All Quiet on the Western Front

Lewis Milestone, 1930, bw (8.5*)
Best Picture (AA)
Winner of the Oscar® for best picture of 1930, this classic anti-war film is based on the novel by Frenchman Erich Maria Remarque. Ironically, in shooting this film, which is about young, idealistic German soldiers, director Lewis Milestone, also an Oscar®-winner for best director, chose to have the Germans speak English, yet the French are speaking French! go figure..

The lead role went to young Lew Ayres, just 19 at the time and with no major film credits. At times he overacts a bit, as do most actors of that era, used to making exaggerated facial expressions, a holdover from the silent film era. If you can get past the dated look of this film, and the resulting stilted dialogue, then it's actually a pretty good war epic.

There are many scenes of WW1 action that are probably close to reality. We've become so accustomed to Hollywood war films that a realistically shot war film will likely look more tame to us than celluloid war. Unfortunately the pace of the war sections are broken up by visits home, visits to wounded comrades, too much marching, and much searching for food. In short, this 150 minute film could have been under two hours with a drastic improvement in pace for the viewer.

I wouldn't call this one of the great war films by modern standards, but it's an important war film in the history of cinema, and pretty good for its era, coming soon after the first best picture winner, Wings, also about WW1, but a silent epic. This should make an interesting double feature with Jean Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, a 2002 French film about WW1, one of the most beautiful color films ever shot, about a woman's search for her fiance, missing from the front lines. We see his story in flashbacks until its conclusion.

Ranked #212 all-time on the IMDB top 250

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The Wages of Fear

Henri-Georges Clouzot, France, 1953, bw (8.4*)
aka La Salaire de la Peur
Best Picture (BAA)
Excellent French film in classic b&w, now considered by many an all-time classic. Yves Montand leads the cast as one of four hungry, jobless men in the middle of nowhere in South America who agree to drive trucks of nitro-glycerin for an oil company in order to put out an oil well fire. Naturally, this is an extremely explosive situation, the slightest jolt could set off the chemicals.

One of the more tense, suspensful films ever made, so popular that it was reshot in 1977 as Sorcerer by William Friedkin, shortly after his success with The French Connection.

Beautifully shot by master director Clouzot, who made The Raven and Diabolique, and many other classic films. The beautiful babe playing Linda is Clouzot's wife Vera Clouzot. This was her first film - she only appeared in films by Clouzot, Diabolique being the most famous. [photo below]

Winner of 5 awards, all best film awards, including a BAFTA for "best film from any source". Now #174 all-time on the IMDB top 250, which is amazing for a French bw film from thr 50's..

Vera Clouzot, wife of director Henri-Georges, a Brazilian born musician -

she only appeared in Clouzot films, notably Wages and Diabolique

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American Beauty

Sam Mendes, 1999 (8.2*)
Best Picture (AA)
For an Oscar®-winning best picture, this is a strange story indeed. First of all, best actor winner, Kevin Spacey, who is bored with real-estate selling wife Annette Bening (who may be having an affair), has a secret crush on his daughter's best friend, a knockout cheerleader played by Mena Suvari [see photo below]

At the same time, he strikes up a friendship with the next door neighbor's teenaged son, which eats at that kid's right wing, homophobic dad, excellently played by Chris Cooper (who would later win his own Oscar® for supporting actor.) This whole story is slightly unsettling, and pretty much R-rated, hence the Oscar® win is a bit surprising; not since Midnight Cowboy has the academy opted for a story of this much squalor and mis-channeled lust. Still, if the story doesn't turn you off, a well filmed cult classic.

Winner of 88 awards overall (one of the highest totals ever), including five Oscars® for picture, director, screenplay, actor, and cinematography. Ranked #39 on the IMDB top 250

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Toy Story 3

Lee Unkrich, 2010 (9.0*)Another winner in the ongoing series, this one's about when the kid, Andy, is finally old enough to go off to college, and what happens to the childhood collection of stuff in the room that is now being passed on to a younger sibling. We've all been through this at some point, losing countless millions in old baseball cards and Beatles memorabilia tossed out by moms (these two from personal experience!)

Along with all the other belongings are the child's favorite toys - in this case, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), the dinosaur, Hamm the pig (John Ratzenburger), Jessie the cowgirl (Joan Cusack), the potato heads, and all the other toys from the first two films. The mom is pressuring all the kids to come up with toys to throw out, toys for the attic, and toys to be donated to a day care center. Of course, Andy's (John Morris) toys get mixed up with trash, and then end up at the daycare center, with hilarious results.

They've kept the story energized with some funny twists. My favorite is that Buzz Lightyear has a Spanish mode and when he is accidentally switched to Spanish we read his dialogue in subtitles, and he flits around like a flamenco dancer, so along with language his personality changes to a Spanish one.

This is another tear-jerking, crowd pleaser from Pixar, but it maintains the level of the first two, and forms a perfect complement for the trilogy. Winner of 19 awards so far, out of 41 nominations, and up for five upcoming Oscars® including best picture. #29 on the IMDB top 250.

Our review of the original Toy Story, from 1993, and it's sequel

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The Social Network

David Fincher, 2010 (8.4*)
I love David Fincher but was not as impressed with Social Network as some of his other films, such as The Game, Fight Club, and Zodiac. Network is well-crafted, but these other films had an existential edge that put people in life or death situations.

Social Network only put people in lawsuit situations as the film was about a liar, a cheat, and a thief, played with little acting by Jesse Eisenberg, who is about as bland as a computer bytehead ought to be; and about a white collar criminal, who, rather than serving time, has been made a billionaire by this unscrupulous system. It's more enraging than entertaining, a sad statement on the current economic reality, that if you're willing to steal data, hack into proprietary computer systems (with immunity I might add), and cheat your partners, such as CFO Eduardo Saverin (effectively played by Andrew Garfield), then maybe you too can become an American billionaire and a folk hero. And who needs old friends, many new ones will flock to the money once you have it, especially the babes; and who cares why they're there - the important point is that they're hanging around.

All in all, this is not a very respectable businessman, or even a worthy human being. In the film, he has no friends for a good reason, he's pretty much a despicable egotist with obvious disdain for most others. The film even begins with a display of his egotism, which causes his current girlfriend, Erica Albright (Rooney Mara) to break up. In spite he embarasses her in his blog online, which is really a slanderous offense, so I hope she later got some money from this all-American jerk.

This is how the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg got his start: he hacked in and stole The Harvard Facebook, which was an online directory of university students with ID photos, very much like an online yearbook. He then had a 'rate the girls' contest with the photos of the female students, in which he paired two at a time on his blog site. His penalty when caught? Academic suspension for six months, which then gave him more free time to do more hacking and stealing. He then did the same to some other universities, committing a federal crime in each case. Where the heck was the FBI?

A couple of entrepreneurs, who row crew for Harvard, came up with the idea for a Facebook styled reference just for Harvard U. that he agreed to work on for them. Rather than show them anything, he kept stalling them while he created Facebook for himself. So there's the story in a nutshell; it's public knowledge, this film just adds a few personal confrontations and anecdotes, and is told is flashback style from some legal depositions for the lawsuits, as this immature kid created nothing but enemies. He had no real original ideas, just a few minor enhancements to existing networks, such as the 'relationship status' of the individual (whoopee..) and he didn't even create a unique name. This is very similar to simple online resume and job sites, all that was basically added was a message system like the 80's style bulletin boards. So, combine personal resumes with 80's level internet, and 'boom', instant success with very little work.

Ironically, in California to seek venture capital, he teams up with Napster (ie, stolen music) creator Sean Parker (an effectively obnoxious Justin Timberlake), who admits "everyone was suing us, so I just said 'fuck it' and declared bankruptcy." Yep, avoid all liability and punishment by just going bankrupt; what a clever system the lawyers have devised to protect guilty capitalists at the public's expense, as only corporate not personal wealth is at risk; you can keep whatever you managed to steal or get as 'compensation', and if the corporation is 'bankrupt', none of the guilty lose anything except a job, but someone else crooked will always hire a crook with experience. It's only fitting that these two should team up in Facebook's early success.

Fincher and the film will apparently win many awards this year, but I preferred the fight for survival in the austere crime film Winter's Bone, and the mind-blowing complexity of the sci-fi film Inception. However, this belongs in the short list of films worth seeing about capitalism, which includes Wall Street, Rogue Trader, Boiler Room, Executive Suite, The Hudsucker Proxy, Putney Swope, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and Tucker: A Man and His Dream. Ironically, only Suite and Tucker were about anyone with any real ethics and original business ideas, the rest were about con artists, thieves, and manipulators.

Awards page at IMDB, it's up to 55 so far.. it's also #167 on the IMDB top 250 films..

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The Usual Suspects

Bryan Singer, 1995 (9.1*)
Told in flashback form in this brilliant Oscar®-winning script by Christopher McQuarrie, this is a crime story like none other. A witness, Oscar®-winner Kevin Spacey, is a lone survivor to a gang massacre at a dockside ship, and he tells a harrowing tale to police detective Chazz Palmentieri.

The story begins with a lineup which gathers together five career criminals, aka 'the usual suspects', which allows them to plot a major heist together, and it is this story we learn in the tale told by Spacey. The excellent cast makes this story a gripping mystery - Kevin Pollack, Gabriel Byrne, Benecio del Toro, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin play the criminals, with Palmentieri and Dan Hedaya the detectives.

This is a creative and unique story that you won't easily forget, with twists you can't see coming, and this film is now permanently entrenched in the crime hall of fame. Now #25 on the IMDB top 250, rated by viewers.

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Into the Wild

Sean Penn, 2007 (8.6*)
This is the true story of recent college graduate Christopher McCandless, who, after graduating from Emory U. in Atlanta, did not want to continue on to graduate school or join the work force hoping to achieve his own suburban dream like his parents. Instead he embarked on a spiritual quest of self-discovery like many others before him. Little-known actor Emile Hirsch turned in a subtle yet moving performance, and won some acting awards as a result, and made himself known around the world.

We get to see his story in bits and pieces, as he first leaves Georgia in a car, which is later found deserted after a flash flood in southern California, with no sign of Christopher, to the dismay of parents, former Oscar®-winners William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden. He then hitchikes to the Alaskan wilderness, within sight of Mt. McKinley, trying to survive in nature without any help whatsoever, armed with a book on edible wild plants, the optimism of youth, and an abandoned school bus as a home.

Two-time Oscar®-winning actor Sean Penn proved he could direct with this picture, making a seemingly simple travel story into a life changing voyage into the unknown, and a film not easily forgotten. Overseas, the film won some awards for best foreign film. The awards page at IMDB

Into the Wild moved enough people to be currently ranked #145 on the IMDB top 250.

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No Country For Old Men

Ethan and Joel Coen, 2007 (9.0*)
Best Picture (AA)
Many consider this riveting crime drama to be the best film yet from the Coen Brothers, Ethan and Joel. It certainly won the most awards, most going to the supporting performance of Javier Bardem, who created the 'bounty hunter from hell' in this, who leaves a trail of bodies in his wake. He is such a callous character, often making victims call a coin toss for their lives, that he became an immediate cult icon.

The film begins with Josh Brolin out hunting, and stumbling onto a group of trucks, bodies, and an apparent drug deal gone horribly wrong. This sets a chain of events in motion that baffles veteran sheriff Tommy Lee Jones, a worthy Oscar®-nominee for this himself.

It's almost as if an ill wind is blowing out of the prairie that no one can control; they can only follow it around but they can't stop it from blowing on everyone in its path. A hard film to pigeon-hole, it seems to be the perfect Texas crime story, and neo-noir for the new millenium.

Winner of Oscars® for picture, director, adapted screenplay (taken from the novel by Cormac McCarthy) as well as Bardem's (photo rt) supporting Oscar®. Accepting the award, Bardem said "worst haircut ever on film". Overall it won 94 awards, 20 of those for Bardem, out of 140 nominations, making it perhaps the most critically successful film of the decade.

Currently #119 on the IMDB Top 250

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Downfall

Oliver Hirschbiegal, Germany, 2004 (8.5*)
Truly one of the best WW2 films, based on the book by Hitler's last private secretary, Downfall tells of the last days of the Third Reich within Hitler's bunker. Alexandra Maria Lara (Youth Without Youth, Control, The Reader), a Romanian actress whose family moved to Germany is Trudl Junge, the woman who survived those final days in order to bring this story to the world.

Bruno Ganz is excellent as Hitler, without being a parody or impressionist, but capturing the moody personality in his darkest days. There are some side stories just as interesting, such as one of a kid of 12 who takes out invading Soviet tanks in the streets of Berlin with the Russian invention of Molotov coctails. He becomes one of the last heroes given medals by Hitler outside the bunker.

This would now make a good companion film to Judgment at Nuremberg, which placed those surviving war criminals on trial, those who didn't commit suicide along with Hitler and others who didn't want to face a world without their beloved Fuehrer.

This is now one of the highest ranked war films at IMDB, #93 currently on their top 250. It won 15 of 29 award nominations, usually from critics, such as Online Film Critics, London, and Kansas City; it was also nominated for the foreign language film Oscar®, losing to Spain's The Sea Inside.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Milos Forman, 1975 (9.2*)
Best Picture (AA, BAA, GG)
This excellent filming of hippie author Ken Kesey's novel of a brash mental patient, played by Oscar® winner Jack Nicholson, was the leading Oscar® winner for 1975 (five overall), winning best picture for producers Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas, the actor. The novel arose out of Kesey's own experiences at a mental institution where he worked in California in order to gain access to the drugs after LSD was made illegal by the FDA.

Nicholson's character McMurphy, who pretends madness to get out of prison work so he's really an intelligent schemer, becomes the leader of the other patients in their fight against a dictatorial nurse Ratched, perfectly played by previously unknown Oscar® winner Louise Fletcher, who uses her position to terrorize and maintain harsh control over a band of frightened yet safe patients, many of whom undoubtably could be released after more humane treatment. She seems to derive sadistic satisfaction in keeping the 'inmates' (as they are not treated like patients but criminals) both unbalanced and cowering in fear.

Though not a pleasant film to sit through, it makes positive statements about individual freedom and dissent at a time when the U.S. was heavily oppressed by the Nixon regime which was suppressing student anti-war protests and usurping individual Constitutional rights in order to maintain fascist control over all facets of American life by some die-hard right wing conservatives, most of whom had supported Sen. McCarthy in his anti-communist with hunts in the 50's, a committee on which Nixon himself had served. This is not a film for the squeamish, as it accurately shows how electric shock, heavy anti-psychotic drugs, and lobotomies are routinely used as punishment to control unruly patients.

Nicholson showed what an explosive actor he could be as well as giving voice to the complaints of the average citizen when faced with authoritarian control over their daily lives. As such, this film makes the most American of statements, that sometimes the only recourse is to organize people and stand united against tyranny together. The excellent screenplay adaptation, which condenses a longer novel into its essential elements, also won Oscars® for authors Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben.

Director Milos Forman, also an Oscar®-winner for this, and later for Amadeus (in 1984), came here to escape communism in Czechoslavakia, then under Russian control. There he made more light-hearted and comedic films, such as the hilarious Fireman's Ball (at which nothing goes according to plan, not even the beauty pagent, in which there are no contestants so the elderly firemen drag unwilling girls off the dance floor), so he injects much humor in the early minutes of this much more serious film. Also nominated for Oscars® was the terrific supporting performance of Brad Dourif, the cinematography of Haskell Wexler and Bill Butler, editing of Chew, Klingman, and Kahn, and the music of sometimes Rolling Stones member Jack Nitzsche.

Filmed for just over 4 million, it grossed 112 mil in the U.S. alone. Cuckoo's Nest also won six British academy awards, or BAFTA's, and 28 awards overall. The awards page at IMDB

On a personal note, I've had a hard time putting together a review of this film, as my own father was diagnosed schizophrenic during the Korean War, his second war as a navy aircraft mechanic. He was flown back to a V.A. hospital, and also given electroshock treatment and reduced to a shell of his former self, never again being able to use his engineering degree and reduced to doing menial jobs until his death at 46 from cancer, likely caused from witnessing atomic tests in the Pacific from the decks of U.S. ships without any protection. After the diagnosis, he was discharged from the navy and my family never received any compensation from the government, so it's hard for me to join the flag-waving patriotic bandwagon no matter what war we wage.

Note: Kesey's own LSD-driven lifestyle was the subject of Tom Wolfe's excellent novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in which Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters drove around the U.S. in their bus freely giving out acid when it was legal. The psychedelic bus' destination was labeled as "Further", and Wolfe's novel is a touching ode to a bygone era of freedom, self-expression, and naive optimism.

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The Secret in Their Eyes

(El secreto de sus ojos)
Juan José Campanella, Argentina, 2009 (9.5*)
Best Foreign Film (AA)
A retired couselor, played by Ricardo Darín, who worked for the court system in Argentina, is writing a novel about a homicide case that haunted his career. He goes to visit a former female colleague, Soledad Villamil, to discuss the case and get some input for shaping the story for his novel - he wants credibility, he's not just writing a memoir. The original homicide case, as well as the couple's work history, is then shown in flashbacks, from the time the politically connected Irene is newly hired into the office of a court judge where Benjamin is a dedicated and determined mid-level bureaucrat.

What follows is a complex and sophisticated crime story, which takes the viewers on a serpentine path that wanders from past to present. At times this is a mentally engrossing puzzle, but at others can be a brutal, conscience churning exercise in trying to understand the will and methods of governments, especially one controlled by police state fascists.

Mixed with the homicide investigation is an undercurrent of romantic intrigue, as the older bachelor, mired in a anonymous obscurity, has an obvious attraction for the younger, attractive, but engaged Irene. This is understated but to some may seem an unnecessary sub-plot that detracts from the crime story; it's for this reason that I didn't rate this a 10. Still, the screenplay, from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, is terrific, as are the cinematography, editing, and Campanella's superb directing. This is one of the best crime films of the first decade of the new millenium, some are saying 'of all time'.

Including the Oscar® for Foreign Language Film, Secret won 34 international awards, and had another 19 nominations (awards page at IMDB). It's currently ranked #170 on the IMDB top 250, as rated by regular reviewers. It won 13 Argentinian academy awards with another 4 nominations.

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Avatar

James Cameron, 2009 (8.1*)

Basically, Avatar is another war/western in space, much like Star Wars and Starship Troopers. The story could easily be the U.S. vs the Souix nation, who are sitting on gold in the Black Hills, their sacred ground given to them in a government treaty, which was then ignored when gold was discovered. In Avatar, on planet Pandora (don't expect any mythology here, it's not that intelligent), the Na'vi are stting on "unobtanium" (silly name, right?), which is under their sacred tree, and of course, a giant earth-based corporation wants to mine the valuable substance like gold, oil, copper, uranium on earth; this 'evil empire' also uses ex-military misfits as a mercernary army to subdue the planet's natural dangers. The natives, like the Souix, the Incans, and countless others, are both expendable and primitive (they shoot bows and arrows for gosh sake!), therefore irrelevant to the profit-minded and anyone with more military power. (Here the big battle is helicopters vs. dragons, land robots vs. men on horses and angry rhinos)

One crippled soldier, played by Sam Worthington, is introduced to the Na'vi culture through use of a computer-connected cloned being, called an "avatar", hardly a God incarnate like the original meaning of the word. In this case, more like soldiers and scientists, who are led by a largely-wasted Sigourney Weaver, incarnated to both study then exploit these natives.

Though the special effects and animation design are superb, the story is not original, has nothing unexpected or new in it, and is actually predictable and frustrating. If you've read science fiction, it's a combination of Ursula K. Le Guin's novella "The Word for World is Forest", Roger Zelazny's novel "Lord of Light", and Cecelia Holland's aliens from "Floating Worlds". At least someone around Cameron has some science fiction literacy, but not much originality.

If you liked Star Wars, you'll like this, as it's aimed at the same roughly 12-yr old audience. Star Trek (the 2009 one) is actually a better sf film, and even won the Empire Award in the UK for "Best SF/fantasy Film" over Avatar. Three technical Oscars® (special effects, art direction, and bafflingly cinematography which won over the great work done in Hurt Locker) were about right for this - it is an obvious crowd pleaser 'yarn', but not very artistic, subtle, complex, or literate. Stephen Lang is terrible as the macho military commander (read "evil incarnate"), but then with lines like "On my mark", "light her up", and "take em out", he couldn't be very good no matter what. I'm not sure that 3-D would help this much, and I'm also not sure why people are going to see this over and over - I suppose because no one reads great science fiction novels any more. Cameron's Aliens is still a better sf film (so is Terminator 2), even that film's limited dialogue was better and funnier, as in "game over, man, game over!", and "then why don't you put her in charge?"

Note: Ironically, the IMDB avg fan rating is 8.4 - I didn't see this until after I ranked it, but that was my original rating, before rewatching it. It's currently #93 on the IMDB 250, but that will probably fall over time as fans are the first to rate these, then they slowly decline to their more proper place. Cameron's Aliens is ranked #53.

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Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino, 2009 (8.2*)The world's wildest director has gone B-movie plus with this wild WW2 fantasy, in which he holds his imagination in check until the last reel, then the infamous Tarantino style is in full display.

A miscast Brad Pitt (a Tennessee officer with a bad imitation southern drawl) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers in a scene lifted from the Dirty Dozen, into a group of "Apache" styled renegage killers, who beat Nazis with a bat and take their scalps as well. The idea is to be so brutal in response to Nazi brutality as to send rumors through occupied France that some incarnate devil Jews are creating fear and mayhem while remaining untouched themselves. Along the way they get help from an escaped Jewess named Shosanna who now runs a Parisian cinema, which shows German films regularly, and also an expatriate German actress, now a double agent.

Most of the scenes here are almost painstakingly slow, then erupt in some sort of violent death. There are visual references to many other films, buffs will catch them. There are even more musical references, many stolen from other films outright - spaghetti westerns seem to be the top reference, making it hard to take this as a serious film, but more like a tongue-in-cheek pastische of subtle film homages.

Enjoyable if you don't look to deep, and don't mind some occasional brutality. The film is stolen by the funny and erudite performance of Christoph Waltz, who won the film's only Oscar® and dozens of other acting awards worldwide as the man known as "The Jew Hunter". The film's script also won numerous awards. Fans of Quentin's will love this, others will perhaps be bored and scoff, I was sort of in-between: there are much better WW2 films, but there are worse Tarantino films; in fact, this may be his best after Pulp Fiction.

Currently ranked #86 on the IMDB top 250

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In Bruges

Martin McDonagh, 2008 (9.1*)

This is a thoroughly enjoyable and creative black comedy, about two hit men hiding out in Bruges, Belgium, the best preserved medieval city in Europe. Rookie director Martin McDonagh got the idea for this film while visiting the city once, and the two characters represent his own split feelings about the town: beautiful and historic on one hand, then boring when that becomes the everyday routine. In two terrific performances, Brendan Gleeson is the older, wiser hit man who enjoys touring the historic town, while Colin Farrell, new to the profession, is bored, anxious, and needs more excitement, more booze, more anything.

The pair quickly discover a film being shot and befriend both a dwarf actor, and a crew member, the sensual Clémence Poésy, who offers Farrell just the escape he needs. The film escalates into violence, especially after boss Ralph Fiennes shows up, but is a dark comedy until then. It's really a film noir with some humor, and lots of swearing. The supporting cast from the hotel owner (Thekla Reuten) to a rude Canadian (Zeljko Ivanek, Emmy-winner for Damages) are all excellent.

The film has some artistic and even surreal moments, magically filmed. When you consider all the elements involved: a town as co-star, a dwarf in a surrealist film, drug-dealing con-artists, a hit on a priest, a kid-loving mobster - this turns out to be quite a unique script from McDonagh. Farrell won the Golden Globe for actor in a comedy (I think his most versatile performance to date, tho' Home at the End of the World was probably more difficult), and Gleeson (brilliant!) was nominated, as their onscreen chemistry was hilarious. Gleeson's performance is actually the more polished and professional, he's done this often. McDonagh's Oscar-nominated screenplay won several international awards, including the BAFTA®, for which the movie was nominated for Best British film.

Be sure to watch all the bonus shorts on the dvd, especially one with all the F-word outtakes from the whole movie, there's certainly over a hundred!

Update: Brendan Gleeson just won an Emmy in Sept 09 for actor in a tv film or miniseries, for "Into the Storm"

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Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood, 2008 (8.7*)
This is just another gripping and hard-hitting modern drama from actor-director Clint Eastwood, who seems to improve with age like a fine Carmel area wine. Here he appropriately plays a hardened, grizzled Korean war veteran whose wife has just died. His neighborhood is now mostly southeast Asian immigrants from the Hmong culture, a mountain tribe there. He avoids them, they mouth off about him under their breaths. Things change when a local Hmong street gang starts putting pressure on his neighbor's son Thao, played by Bee Vang, and Eastwood helps keep the gang from kidnapping him by showing up in the yard with his loaded rifle from the war.

From then on, he's broken through the cultural barriers and the Hmongs all now respect him, a stranger who came to their aid. His gruff facade is gradually broken down by Thao's sister Sue, an intelligent and straightforward teenage girl, superbly played by Ahney Her; she simply doesn't accept his rejections, and is persistant in an unassuming way. She quickly becomes a closer friend to him than his own relations, who seem to consider him an aging inconvenience.

The Gran Torino of the title sits in Clint's garage, and is something he once worked on at the nearby auto plant; it's also something the gang, his granddaughter, and Thao all admire. Here, it become's a metaphor of an idealistic America of the past, when things were well made and people took pride in making them - much happier and more secure times, with ideals worth holding onto; for Clint, he can at least hold onto the car, keeping it in mint condition as life deteriorates all around. This is a very gripping, believable drama, one that should have been up for the best picture Oscar, as Clint was for directing; he even wrote the title song, played over the closing credits.

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The Wizard of Oz

Victor Fleming, 1939 (8.4*)
The GOOD news: the remastered colors will blow you away, all fans should see this new dvd version. Toto and the creepy flying monkeys were terrific, having a seemingly gay lion (Bert Lahr's only memorable role) was a stroke of comic genius, Margaret Hamilton was the perfect evil witch, Frank Morgan the perfect wizard, and I hope everyone got the reference to poppies putting them to sleep and snow waking them back up.

Otherwise, everyone's favorite children's fantasy just could be the most overrated film of all time, #18 on our Top Ranked survey (I'd put it about 200th). This actually followed the classic animated Snow White by two years, which makes me wish that Disney had at least had a hand in this. Can you imagine this film if they made it today, with the technology used for Lord of the Rings? My problems began in my own childhood, thinking this was "one giant-sized kid", even bigger than the witch - one would think they had good enough child actors to have cast this movie appropriately. Judy Garland looked like she was in her 20's (though just 17), but this was supposed to be a little girl, maybe ten years old. It always seemed to me that "Over the Rainbow" was just thrown into this movie, didn't fit the rest of the film's music (its certainly not a kid's song), and seems like it should have been in Meet Me in St. Louis instead (a more appropriate vehicle for Garland, imo). Buddy Ebsen was supposed to be the tin man but had a reaction to the metallic makeup and dropped out. Could't they get Donald O'Connor? (Don't get me wrong, I'm a Garland fan since I love great singers, I just prefer her in other roles: St. Louis, and Star is Born; she's miscast in this, it's a popular choice, not an artistic one)

All that aside: This is great fun for kids, with lame humor (unless you're under 10) and very slow scenes, but with the "Yellow Brick Road" refrain to seemingly link it all together and keep it moving. In fact when the film came out, Harvard's awards dubbed it "the worst film of all time". Of course, that was 1939 and they didn't have many films to choose from. For kids and fans only, you know who you are, or if you just need something entertaining!

Update: upon considering the religious implications, I upped my rating a little. Did anyone else notice that the only other American Dorothy sees on her journey has set himself up as "god" in Oz, which rhymes with "Gods" by the way? He rules by fear and intimidation ("dare you question the great Oz?"), using magic (smoke, mirrors, illusions) to convince people he's something supernatural, then sends people on tasks in his name that he hopes will get them killed so he's done with them and won't have to deliver anything material. Then when Dorothy's group succeeds, all he has to offer is homespun advice and common sense wisdom, and they have nothing more than what they already had, only self-realization. This could be nothing but a satire of religion to me (or history of religions), or at least America's version of religion; perhaps the way U.S. politicians use religion to scare and control people, and to get votes. I'm not sure of author Frank Baum's original intentions way back when he wrote this, but it sure seems that this is a clear parody of how we are controlled, even in this 'new millenium'.

[Updated: 7.29.09]

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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Frank Capra, 1939, bw (9.1*)
The perfect film for an inauguration and new era of optimism, Mr. Smith is Frank Capra’s idealistic tribute to the spirit of democracy. Jimmy Stewart is a populist Senate candidate, one who vows to bring government back to the citizens and fight for what’s right, even standing up to his own party in Congress. He is appointed to office, and his political naivity is tested by the corruption he uncovers.

Naturally he becomes hated in Washington by those in power but at the same time he’s also a hero of the people, and especially his girlfriend, played by Jean Arthur, who helps him legally in his fight. We need more films like this, and Capra was the master of this type of optimistic Americana. Sadly, Capra's Magic Town, about a town used by pollsters to predict elections, is not available on dvd, but it's another political satire as well as a great look at small town America, self-awareness, and the nature of voters and the media. Mr. Smith is #128 on our top ranked films survey.

Note: according to Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, the US Congress saw an advanced showing of this film and tried to ban it by offering Columbia 30% over the cost for the movie so they could destroy it, as it attacks political corruption in the Senate. Capra talked Columbia into showing it, that this was exactly the type of corruption the film was about, politicians who answer to special interests for money and not to the welfare of the citizens. Ironically, the movie was banned after release in Nazi Germany and communist USSR, so the US Congress was trying to side with those fascist governments re censorship! Live and learn people, our 'enemies' ideas are alive and well in the minds of those easily bought out for money, the same type of fascism prevails in all those that would censor individual expression and call it 'national security' or 'treason' or some such nonsense. They forget we were founded by 'treasonous revolutionaries' who risked death for our version of liberty, seven million laws and all, regulating everything we eat, drink, think, take as medicine, see in the media, or are allowed to say at work, school, or in public. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah: all travel is controlled by 'papers' (visas, passports, etc), and enforced by armed guards at all borders, and then inside those borders as well. It's a giant prison planet - where does freedom exist nowdays?

[Updated: 7.28.09]

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