You get a little bit of everything here: massive populist hits, animation, horror, romance, avantgarde, camp...and while that might not be an unusual thing to happen for a "Best of" list year to year, this is one of those examples where we are seeing high quality films from each of these genres.
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
DESPERATE LIVING
I talked about John Waters on my 1974 post, and I can't help but express again that if you want to truly embrace the best of black comedy camp, he is THE place to start. Desperate Living is positively trashy and bonkers to the max with one of Waters' favorite actresses, Mink Stole, playing Peggy Gravel. She has killed her husband and now she and her maid Grizelda are on the move and end up in the town of Mortville, where they are all the subjects to a lady known as Queen Carlotta. It is a film that just needs to be seen to be believed.
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SUSPIRIA
Entering the world of Dario Argento again, we now have what is arguably his most famous film with Suspiria. Jessica Harper plays a ballet student named Suzy who is from America and attending a prestigious European dance academy that just so happens to be a witch coven. I can't help but admit that a lot of my love for this film is for how Argento shoots it. It has got to be one of the most visually stunning films I have ever seen, and quite possibly the best shot horror film I've seen. The colors are just so RICH!
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MOMENTS IN A STOLEN DREAM
Known in its native Philippines by a title that translates to "When You Dream & Wake Up", Moments of a Stolen Dream is a film that feels like a bit of a spiritual forerunner to something like In the Mood for Love in that it is a relationship that seems to be a friendship that only blossoms to something more due to some extraneous circumstances. I even see elements of The Bridges of Madison County and Past Lives. Joey (Christopher de Leon) falls in love with a girl named Anna (Hilda Koronel) after striking up a friendship but she is married with a son but is not happy with her relationship with him as he is very domineering and views her mostly as a trophy wife. This one is a bit of an underseen gem, but I found it to be beautifully made.
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STAR WARS EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE
I will flat out admit that I am not the least bit invested in the Star Wars universe, but I can acknowledge that they are often entertaining films...even the ones that are rather bad because then I just enjoy them on a hate watch level.
However, the original Star Wars was a groundbreaking achievement in so many ways and I will say that a lot of its success does signal an unfortunate shift in the film industry, so I try to ignore that aspect as I do think the populist elements are what make a lot of American films suffer entering the 80s.
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SORCERER
I don't think I quite understood the appeal to Sorcerer when I first saw it. It was based on the French novel The Wages of Fear which was adapted into a 1953 film which I did eventually watch and considered to be quite great. I then grew to appreciate what William Fredkin did with this adaptation, and I also love that he worked with Roy Scheider after he had been in The French Connection and was now more of a widely known star following Jaws. Scheider was an actor who deserved far better roles and he was mostly underappreciated. His best work would come in 1979's All That Jazz.
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#10 - THE RESCUERS
Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, John Lounsbery, & Art Stevens
Written by
- Larry Clemmons
- Ken Anderson
- Vance Gerry
- Ted Berman
- Burny Mattinson
- Frank Thomas
- David Michener
- Fred Lucky
- Dick Sebast
This selection might raise a few eyebrows, but I have always been of the belief that The Rescuers is the most underrated of the Disney animation canon.
Due to my age, I was first introduced to it through its 1990 sequel The Rescuers Down Under which technically did come out in the early years of the Disney Renaissance but was not as well received by audiences or critics in comparison to the film that came out before (The Little Mermaid) or after it (Beauty & the Beast). However, I found the film to be beautifully drawn and rather intriguing...that opening scene with the sweep across the Australian Outback was unlike anything else I had seen at that time and I would watch that film over and over again.
As I got a tad older, I finally watched its predecessor and I couldn't get over how unique it felt compared to basically any other Disney film I had seen. It felt so dark and dreary and moody, and it had that small musical score that felt very much in line with that jazzy easy listening 70s vibe of the time. It was also the last film to be animated by with help from the group of gentlemen known as Disney's "Nine Old Men" so there is a mix of classic and modern feels in the animation that act as a bridge towards the future.
Two little mice named Bianca and Bernard (voiced by Eva Gabor and Bob Newhart) work with the Rescue Aid Society, a group of international mice who headquartered conveniently under the UN in New York. They are tasked with saving abducted children, and zero in on a 6 year old orphan girl named Penny who is taken by Madame Medusa (Geraldine Page) and her lackey Mr. Snoops (Joe Flynn) in order to use her to obtain a rare diamond in a unsafe cavern that they themselves cannot fit in.
Madame Medusa is one of the greatest unsung villains from Disney because she is truly so evil, not to mention pairing her with the incompetent Mr. Snoops, but the fact they got an actress of Geraldine Page's caliber to do the voice was incredible. Even as a young kid before knowing her work, hearing her in the film was practically revelatory.
I also...it must be said...have had the Rescue Aid Society anthem in my head now for over 30 years.
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#9 - HOUSE
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Written by Chiho Katsura & Chigumi Obayashi
House is one of those films that took bold and inventive chances in how to tell a story and how to blend genres only for it to be met with a lot of critical apathy in Japan when it was first released, but did have a solid fanbase from the public. In the years since, not only is it highly acclaimed, but it is considered a true landmark for Japanese cinema.
As a very surreal black comedy horror film that is essentially a fever dream, a young girl we only know as "Gorgeous" who made a trip through the woods with six of her friends to visit her ailing aunt at her country home...but they all encounter supernatural activity and one by one, they succumb to the house devouring them.
A lot about what we see onscreen is utterly baffling, but it is also presented in such an abstract and bizarre way that it becomes infectious to watch and then you wonder what the hell is wrong with you. If there was ever a horror film that can somehow make you feel appalled and almost cheerful all at once, House was a tailormade niche.
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#8 - THE AMERICAN FRIEND
Written & Directed by Wim Wenders
Before I talk about the plot of this film, yes, it is based on one of the Tom Ripley novels that was written by Patricia Highsmith so I will get that out of the way.
Ripley is played by, of all people, Dennis Hopper in this version and he has made the trek to Germany and encounters a terminally ill picture framer named Jonathan Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz) and coerces him into becoming an assassin.
Due to the American aspect with Hopper's presence, scenes between him and Ganz are spoken in English (in addition to the scenes that take place in France) while scenes with Ganz and others are in his native German. Hopper does a great job here, but it is Ganz's truly subtle and beguiling performance that makes the film of another level. Ganz has been in so many stellar films over the years, including Herzog's take on Nosferatu and Wenders' 1987 outing Wings of Desire, and to most others, even if they haven't seen it, he has been immortalized virally for his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in the film Downfall where his scene ranting at his minions became the source of many an online video parody...not that it is a slam at Ganz's abilities; he is truly stunning in that film as he often was in whatever film he acted in.
It may be a bit of a slow-burn, which I'd argue even something like The Talented Mr. Ripley is as well, but I do think it is a strong effort from Wenders who still had the best yet to come within him.
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#7 - ONE SINGS, THE OTHER DOESN'T
Written & Directed by Agnes Varda
While not my absolute favorite work of hers, I do think one of Varda's finest outings in One Sings, The Other Doesn't, which tells the story of two young women over a 14 year period revolving around the burgeoning women's rights movement that was blossoming all around the world.
Beginning in 1962 France, 17-year-old Pauline (Valerie Mairesse) reconnects with 22-year-old Suzanne (Therese Liotard) when she comes across photographs of hers in a gallery. Suzanne is now married with two kids and has a third on the way, but she confides in Pauline that she simply cannot afford a third child so with her help, she obtains money for Suzanne to get an illegal abortion. Roughly another decade passes before the two are reuinited again, but this time, they reconnect through an abortion rights rally.
One Sings, The Other Doesn't is a film that must've felt radical for its time in a lot of ways, but the sad truth is that in today's political climate, something like this would be considered a bit of a lightning rod.
I think what makes Varda a truly incredible filmmaker at addressing this kind of subject matter is not simply just the fact that she is a woman, but she presents it in a way that doesn't preach at you. She presents it in a very simplistic, even poetic way and it is hard to deny that the power of it is more assured than if it had been filled with a ton of passionate and heated monologues.
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#6 - ERASERHEAD
Written & Directed by David Lynch
I am not here to say that this is his best film or that it is necessarily my favorite, however it just felt like the right film of his to watch in that moment. Part of it was because it was one I hadn't sat down to watch in several years but I also felt a tinge of sentimentality as it was his first feature film.
While Lynch doesn't talk about his films in much analytical detail, if at all, I do think the parallels of his stories of being a young father living in a very sketchy part of Philadelphia ring true in this story. He famously once said in an interview that he considered Eraserhead to be his most spiritual film and when he was asked if he could elaborate, he simply said "No".
As bizarre as an image as it might be, I certainly can't help but be brought into a trance when a figure known as The Lady in the Radiator comes forward with her cheeks bigger than a Hostess Sno-Ball and sings "In heaven, everything is fine..."
When I first saw the film, I for some reason thought about Pippin. That might seem like an odd comparison but I was like...is she encouraging him to kill himself?
I suppose that's one interpretation, but nevertheless, I still treasure how much David Lynch made me embrace and chase the weirder and darker sides of cinema at an age when perhaps maybe I shouldn't have done it.
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#5 - A SPECIAL DAY
Written & Directed by Ettore Scola
Co-written by Ruggero Maccari & Maurizio Costanzo
Written & Directed by Robert Altman
Story Consultation by Patricia Resnick
Written & Directed by Woody Allen
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#2 - THE ASCENT
Written & Directed by Larisa Shepitko
I now get to shine a light on Larisa Shepitko, another female filmmaker but one that I admittedly don't have a lot of history with. Her work was not as vast due to the fact her life was cut too short when she died at a car crash in 1979 at the age of 41.
Shepitko was also married to filmmaker Elem Klimov, who would go on to make the brutally devastating Holocaust masterpiece Come & See a few years after the accident. Shepitko's last film, Farewell was just beginning filming at the time of her accident, so Klimov would step in to finish the film for her.
The Ascent would the last film she'd complete in full before her death.
Much like her husband's work later on, The Ascent is an absolutely devastating piece about two Soviet men who go searching for supplies to survive at a nearby farm but it turns out that German soldiers (those pesky punchable Nazis) have already gotten to the area first so they realize they are now in the midst of enemy territory.
Much like Come & See, I don't know if I would ever truly be able to sit through The Ascent again. However, what it adds is that is so stunningly shot that it becomes so beautiful despite how utterly devastating and depressing it is. For as gorgeous as shot is, you may as well have your heart crushed in your hand and your soul beaten with a club.
All you can really do is get swept up in the world and marvel at what Shepitko was able to do with this, and despite what I just said, I may try to give this film another go soon. It is not an easy watch, but I do feel it deserves to be seen and I wish we could've gotten decades more work from her. I should also finally check out the rest of her filmography as well.
I do want to bring up one more thing, which is a quote from Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich after saw the film at one of its earliest screenings. He had been a veteran of the war and was rather stunned by the amount of care and insight that Shepitko gave to this work. He said "Where did this girl come from, who of course experienced nothing of the sort, but knows all about it? How could she express it like this?"
The film was on the brink of being banned because the regulatory authorities thought what was just going to be a film about partisans was actually "a religious parable" with too much of a mystical edge. They eventually relented, but honestly, what Larisa Shepitko achieved here was mystical.
Also - shoutout to Cate Blanchett, who during the press tour for Tar said that The Ascent should be seen by everyone. I always seem to find new ways to adore that woman.
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#1 - OPENING NIGHT
Written & Directed by John Cassavetes
His 1976 outing The Killing of a Chinese Bookie did make that list, but it isn't a film of his I think about as much or even want to revisit. It also made me long for the return of his wife Gena Rowlands to the proceedings, which thankfully, Opening Night provides that.
I have had a history of performing in theatre, although obviously not on Broadway. Nevertheless, I do get drawn to works that delve into the process of performing and developing a piece of art and how it can be its own drama in of itself.
Rowlands is Myrtle Gordon, a highly acclaimed though rather complicated stage actress who is in New Haven for the out-of-town tryout of a Broadway bound play called The Second Woman.
One night after a performance, she comes across a teenage fan named Nancy who is obsessed with her and proceeds to chase after her only to be struck by a car and killed. Witnessing this death completely unnerves Myrtle even to the point that she seeks out her family to attend her shiva only to be treated with apathy.
From there, we watch Myrtle descend into a nervous breakdown combined with a touch of alcoholism and all we can do is watch with heartbreaking interest because not only is it such a tragic story, it is also captivating as we yet again get a true showcase for the genius that is Gena Rowlands and how well her dear husband guides her performance.
Opening Night can be read as a case of an ultimate "Actor's Nightmare", because phrases like "The Show Must Go On" are not untrue and you have to adhere to the performance, but in the case of Myrtle Gordon, she just had reality collide with her hard to the point that she doesn't even know what's left from right and what matters anymore.
It is truly like a psychological horror film with Rowlands being draped in black surrounding bright reds and yellows as her entire psyche just snaps. I find it so fascinating at how some critics took such a disinterest in Cassavetes, such as Variety claiming that he tackled so many films like this before and that because the public didn't seem overly interested.
I mean...so was he supposed to stop????
Thankfully, he didn't stop although he would only make three more films before his untimely death in 1989 at the age of 59. Of those three films, only one of them compared to his peak work from the late 60s and 70s: 1984's Love Streams...but I love that Cassavetes, the Indie King, kept up his gig.
He once said in an interview that when he, Rowlands, and his close-knit crew make a film, they certainly hoped people would like it but it was never a goal to create the next big hit. For him personally, the joy was "in making it".
That philosophy is frankly so refreshing and I will always treasure Cassavetes' work, and I also love that he so frequently gave us a chance to peer into the soul of Gena Rowlands because, MY GOD, she was a ferocious talent that we rarely ever get.
Thank you both.
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