Dir - Juraj Herz
An expert on Czech cinema I assuredly am not, but Juraj Herz's second offering, (and the one that has maintained a considerably positive reputation ever since it was released), The Cremator suites me exceptionally fine. This is another one that rides the thin line of horror as a romantically disturbed Czech-with-a-drop-of-German-blood cremator succumbs to further madness as the First Czech Republic turns over to Nazi Germany at the brink of World War II. Rudolf Hrušínský's title character is wonderfully disturbing from the opening scene, constantly narrating his own life with a Peter Lorre level of creepiness, which is fitting since Herz adopts much German Expressionism from the directing chair as well
Dir - Kenji Mizoguchi
Considered
part of the holy trinity of Japan's all time finest filmmakers along
with Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizogushi died only three
years after making Ugetsu at a time when his final crop of films were
becoming truly revered. Others such as The Life of Oharu and Sansho the
Bailiff are equally on par and speak of other doomed individuals, but
Ugetsu is a more cautionary tale of overcoming the nature of pride and
greed that resonated as much with the Post-War audience of the time as
it does with anyone today. As Mizoguchi was exquisitely skilled at doing, Ugetsu is
framed with alluring shots, (the singing ghost of a noblewoman's father,
a fog-ridden journey down a desolate lake, a lovemaking moment that
pans from bath, to rock, to grass, etc), that voice just as much as the
dialog does in exploring its evocative themes.
Dir - Alfred Hitchcock
My preferences instinctively leaning towards horror, it is no surprise that Psycho and The Birds are my go-to Alfred Hitchcock picks. Yet outside of those gems, you have everything from Rebeca, Notorious, Strangers On a Train, North By Northwest, and even Vertigo which most people besides me and my brother seem to lose their marbles over. I am as fond of Rear Window as the next bloke and whenever I revisit handfuls of Hitchcock's work, this one has enough of an edge over most. One of the director's trademark "gimmick" movies, Window exists entirely in a single Manhattan apartment and explores the concept of voyeurism as it pertains to, (of course), a murder mystery. Hitchcock loved casting James Stewart against the actor's more wholesome, American good guy persona and he portrays another grey-colored, almost accidental anti-hero whose selfish need to be nosy nearly undoes him and the woman that he fights caring about.
Dir - D.W. Griffith
If there was ever a movie to make you long for the days when they were made without computers, the hundred-plus year old Intolerance is a mighty fine candidate. The film is D.W. Griffith's follow-up/part answer to the largely successful and racist The Birth of a Nation which broke box-office records and from a technical stand-point, ushered in then-contemporary filmmaking structures like nothing before it. Griffith expanded his original modern story of crime, reform, and poverty to include three more tales throughout the ages, all of which are inner-cut at an increasingly climactic pace. A century later, the fall of Babylon sequence remains the most breathtaking. Few movie sets ever built are as impressive and Griffith's attention to detail, use of several thousand extras, and his own insistence on self-financing much of the film to have it be as overwhelmingly grand as possible, make Intolerance arguably the finest moment of the silent-film era.
Dir - Spike Lee
I have actually only seen three Spike Lee joints, (which is odd in that I like all of them), so I cannot speak from an expert's standpoint in saying that his 1992 Malcolm X biopic is his best film. Yet I have seen plenty of biopics and few cinematic biographies of any kind are on par with this one. The scope alone is wildly impressive as it focuses on not just a few brief years of its subject's life with some flashbacks thrown in, but instead in much detail on nearly every major element in the real Malcolm X's fascinating thirty-nine years on this planet. This was a dream project for Lee who had been determined to make a film about X long before he had the clout to make it happen and the filmmaker pulls out all of the stops. At over three hours, it moves at a enthralling and stylish pace, (cinematographer Ernest Dickerson deserving a nod of his own), and the complexities and ever-morphing nature of Malcolm X as a human being are never compromised.
Dir - John Ford
As fine a choice as there is for the greatest Western ever made, John Ford and John Wayne's ultimate masterpiece would be The Searchers. Arizona and Utah's shared Monument Valley never looked more breathtaking, (no small feat), even after Ford had utilized the landscape's natural beauty again and again by this point. Plus Wayne who was a long established Hollywood, tough-guy icon has his most defining roll as the racist-driven, proud-to-a-fault, ex-Confederate Ethan Edwards. There are moments of seemingly out-of-place humor in The Searchers, (perhaps most clearly in the wedding scene), but this still excels as a tale of obsession and family pride juuuuust overcoming racism, all with a gorgeous desert backdrop like no other.
Dir - Billy Wilder
One of Billy Wilder's most beloved works, Sunset Boulevard is as quintessential of a Hollywood movie as has ever been made, cutting awfully close to home which is a big part of its success. Gloria Swanson's actual career went almost exactly the same as the perpetually wackadoo Norma Desmond, (minus the crazy), and her butler/former husband/protector-enforcer of her delusion Max is played by Eric Von Stroheim whose real life fate was also specifically similar. Cameo's by Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille also further keep Sunset Boulevard only a few steps away from fiction. Wilder and cinematographer John F. Seitz maintain a morbid, noir atmosphere throughout and William Holden's cynical and flawed Joe Gillis is as believable as he is funny.
Dir - Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese's brutal, universally hailed masterwork Raging Bull tells a story that has been told a thousand different ways before about a man whose inner demons become his downfall. Yet there are not many portrayals as amazing as this. Robert De Niro, (in the most technically dazzling on-screen transformation of his career), championed Jake LaMotta's biography being turned into a movie, eventually convincing a recovering-from-a-drug-overdose/not-at-all-a-boxing fan Scorsese to do it. The director went full-throttle with the most striking fight scenes that anyone had ever seen, with editing and sound design in unison while keeping the camera on the opposite end of the punches in the ring. Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty, (both in career-making roles), are also superb and Bull transcends a simple boxing movie by rewarding us with an equally powerful and uncomfortable depiction of jealousy and, well, RAGE run rampant.
Dir - Orson Welles
The career-defining masterpiece status of Citizen Kane cannot be logically denied by anyone, ergo Touch of Evil by default can be hailed as the second greatest film that Orson Welles ever made. Nearly two decades after Kane, Welles was very overweight and very eager to have a go at another A-list-casted Hollywood vehicle. Thus given the chance, he chose the Whit Masterson novel Badge of Evil to adapt, allegedly after telling producer Albert Zugsmith to give him the worst possible script that he had laying around so that he could re-write it and make it brilliant. Never a humble bloke that Welles fellow. There is the famous , opening three minute long shot, lack of opening credits, shocking pre-rape scene, a handful of delightful cameos, and enough wildly clever camera angels to raise Evil into the highest tier of film noir. The performances are superb across the board, but Welles even hogs the best of those for himself as the bloated, limping, corrupt mountain of a police captain Hank Quinlan.
Dir - Oliver Stone
Likely the most polarizing, majorly released film of the 90s, Oliver Stone's brutal and hilarious Natural Born Killers was the perfect satire for the perfect age of media-crazed violence. Mostly from what I have seen, the people who do not get it and think that this film is merely glorifying mass murder for entertainment's sake are the ones who vehemently dislike it. Stone has long been a challenging filmmaker in that he strives to divide his audience. When you make a biopic about George W. Bush and an over three-hour movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy, that will happen. Yet Killers takes the director's calling to force the viewer to question the society that they live in to its bloody, surreal, and way over-the-top zenith. Furthermore, it remains my favorite of his works for that very reason.
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