In Contention

Tag: Once Upon a Time in America

  • Gangster lovin’

    Johnny Depp in Public EnemiesJoe Queenan is one of my least favorite Guardian film contributors — too often perversely hard to please — but I did appreciate the boyish honesty of this piece, in which he sheds his usual cineaste grousing to indiscriminately geek out over guns and fedoras. With “Public Enemies” only a few days away, he extols the simple joys of the gangster genre:

    For those of us who secretly believe that gangster movies are the only ones worth making – despite our obsequious lip service to Truffaut and Antonioni – the timing could not be better. Aficionados of gangster movies view reality as a daisy chain connecting one gangland saga to the next, with ordinary life – family, children, career, lunch – occurring in between. We do not need an uninterrupted stream of gangster movies to survive, and we certainly do not need half-hearted twaddle like Knockaround Guys to function properly – but we cannot tolerate long gaps between high-quality releases.

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  • Those underrated gems of the 1980s

    BirdFor me, no decade was as overall weak for films as the 1980s, a 10-year span when bad movies made a fortune good ones went unnoticed. Of course there were exceptions to that rule.  “Amadeus,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Platoon” were brilliant productions that also scored at the box office, but more often than not, great films were discovered on video, sometimes years after release.

    A quick glance at the decade will show you that “Raging Bull” was not hailed as a masterpiece right away, and was by all acounts a failure at the box office, as was Warren Beatty’s masterful “Reds.” Phillip Kaufman’s extraordinary space adventure “The Right Stuff” had all the makings of a great American film (which it was and remains) and a box office smash, but sadly never found an audience, falling by the wayside in the summer of 1983. Audiences were flocking to see junk like “Flashdance,” “Footloose,” “Top Gun” and “Dirty Dancing” while many great films opened and closed without causing a ripple.

    I went back through the 1980s recently and re-visited 15 films that deserved attention when they were released, deserved Academy Award nominations (or more than they got), and certainly should have found an audience at the time of their release. Many of them were admired by critics, but I have left out the obvious — “Raging Bull,”  “Blade Runner,” etc. — to include smaller films that need a little love. Here they are, in no particular order…

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  • ‘Revolutionary Road’ — snubbed today, sure to be remembered forever

    Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Revolutionary RoadOne of the biggest surprises of the awards season for me is the fact that “Revolutionary Road” is being all but forgotten by many critics groups and has certainly slipped off the Oscar radar as a result. Is the film deserving?  Absolutley.  I think it is one of the best films of the year and among the finest I have seen this decade, but for whatever reason — and who can explain these things — it has not gotten a great deal of press.

    This is a major accomplishment, a work of art superbly directed by Sam Mendes who in eight years has become one of the most exciting directors in modern cinema. Though I count myself among those who though his breakthrough film “American Beauty” was very good but also radically over-praised, his follow-up, “Road to Perdition,” was superb and should have been among the nominees for Best Picture and Best Director in 2002, vastly superior to “Chicago.”

    His third film, “Jarhead,”  was darkly beautiful to look at but didn’t quite work with audiences who are still not interested in films about Afghanistan or Iraq (whichever installment).  Mendes possesses a gift with actors, one of those directors like Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese and more recently, Paul Thomas Anderson.  He’s able to bring out their best work.  It seems no surprise he married an actress.

    He is also patient with a narrative, allowing it to unfold with the knowledge the audience connects with the actors.  With “Revolutionary Road,” he has cranked out a crowning achievement in a career just getting started, and yet like so many other masterworks, it may slip through the cracks, barely noticed.

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  • Movies that Oscar missed

    As film junkies, we all know it happens. Usually every single year there are one or more films the Academy passes over for Best Picture consideration, in some cases because there are, after all, just five slots available, but in others because, well — they blew it.

    Like the rest of you, I sit and listen to the nominees announced live every January and have never had a year when I did not roll my head and ask to no one in particular, “Where is such and such or so and so?”

    I mean for me, the great honor is the nomination, because when “Kramer vs. Kramer” defeats “Apocalypse Now” for Best Picture, how can you possibly take the winners seriously? However, a nomination — that is decidedly different.

    Where was the Best Picture nod for John Ford’s masterful “The Searchers,” arguably the greatest American western ever made? And Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” which redefined the horror genre?

    Since 1980 there have been a number of truly brilliant films passed over, leaving this critic often shaking his head in disgust, though I get over quick enough to watch the damned awards…talk about hooked. But it amazes me how “The Empire Strikes Back” can be a better film than “Star Wars,” yet not be nominated in the big race. Ditto Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out,” possibly the finest film of his career, ignored in every category despite its artistic mastery. The very same year Milos Forman gave us “Ragtime,” a much stronger film than “Chariots of Fire,” which won the Oscar, or even “On Golden Pond,” one of the five nominees!

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