Top 100 Films of the 20th Century – Part 6: 80-76

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Rank: 80

Title: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Release Year: 1975

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Psychological

Director: Milos Forman

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Christopher Lloyd, Will Sampson, and Brad Dourif

Plot Summary: R.P. McMurphy is a mental patient who does not believe he belongs in an institution. In rebellion, he rallies the other patients against the oppressive head nurse.

What Makes It Special: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest works on many levels. It is in moments very funny, in others dramatically engaging, in others an interesting look at the administration of treatment to mental health patients and how society views and treats these people. At its heart however, the film succeeds due to its fantastic characters, lead by R.P. McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, played brilliantly by a great cast. Milos Forman is also unafraid to approach the film from a rather brash place. He does not delicately navigate the social stigma of metal health, instead taking it head on using McMurphy as his in (is McMurphy a con exploiting the system or someone actually in need of metal healthcare?). The result is a stunning, revealing look at mental institutions.

Trailer: Here

Available on: Blu-ray and Streaming

Rank: 79

Title: Badlands

Release Year: 1973

Genre: Drama

Director: Terrence Malick

Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, and Warren Oates

Plot Summary: Kit and Holly are infatuated with each other, but after Kit murders Holly’s father for trying to keep them apart the two take off on a killing spree across the American badlands.

What Makes It Special: Badlands is based on the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree when a fifteen-year-old girl and her twenty-five-year-old boyfriend slaughtered several people including her entire family in 1958. It was America’s first experience with this kind of homegrown carnage. Terrence Malick’s film perfectly captures the country’s fascination with these killers – their celebrity. The relationship between Kit and Holly is also very interesting, as Holly seems to be both enchanted and terrified by Kit. The performances from Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are absolutely absorbing, mixing innocence with sort of a primal evil. Aesthetically, the film is engaging as well – particularly its photography. Badlands is in many ways the quintessential American masterpiece.

Trailer: Here

Available on: Blu-ray

Rank: 78

Title: Sweet Smell of Success

Release Year: 1957

Genre: Drama

Director: Alexander Mackendrick

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Susan Harrison

Plot Summary: J.J. Hunsecker is powerful but unethical New York City gossip columnist. He is unhappy with his sister’s relationship with a jazz musician. So, he coerces press agent Sidney Falco to break them up.

What Makes It Special: Sweet Smell of Success plays like a film-noir stylistically, as this is an underworld of sleazy people undertaking dirty business at all costs to get what they want. There are no heroes in this world. The narrative is built on the back-and-forth of the power struggles of its characters, each manipulating those around them to come out on top. It is a heartless world, and yet the shady treachery is wildly compelling. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis are both wonderful as Hunsecker and Falco, respectively, each giving one of their career best performances. This is a forgotten film-noir masterpiece.

Trailer: Here

Available on: Blu-ray

Rank: 77

Title: Notorious

Release Year: 1946

Genre: Mystery/Romance Drama

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains

Plot Summary: Alicia Huberman flees America in shame after her father is accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. On her way to South America, she is approached by the CIA to spy on a group of Nazi working on a project in Rio de Janeiro.

What Makes It Special: Notorious perfectly employs many of Alfred Hitchcock’s narrative and stylistic devices, most notably the use of a McGuffin. The film wonderfully mixes romance, suspense, espionage, and drama all set in the fresh post-WWII world, with tensions still running high amidst hopeful optimism. Hitchcock’s directing is on point throughout, with each scene building towards a dynamically climatic conclusion. The performances are also fantastic. They are nuanced, and yet utilize the best attributes of each actor’s star quality. Cary Grant is ever charming, but here he has a darkly aggressive side, while Ingrid Bergman just commands the screen. Claude Rains is brilliant as the villain – playing his character as ultimately sympathetic. Notorious is maybe not a film that Hitchcock fans immediately point to, as it is not flashy, but it is secretly one of his best.

Trailer: Here

Available on: Blu-ray

Rank: 76

Title: A Woman Under the Influence

Release Year: 1974

Genre: Drama

Director: John Cassavetes

Cast: Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands

Plot Summary: Mabel and Nick have a loving marriage, but Mabel’s fits of madness prove to be a disruptive force, maybe too strong to overcome.

What Makes It Special: A Woman Under the Influence is a demonstration of powerhouse performances and phenomenal directing. Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands run the full gambit of human in emotion over the course of the film, all staged in a confined space. John Cassavetes cultivates such an emotional experience that the film is rather jarring. It is a directors’ film for directors and an actors’ film for actors. It is embodies the craft.

Trailer: Here

Available on: DVD and Streaming

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Movie of the Week – Badlands

This week’s movie is Badlands (1973).

The romance drama is about Kit and Holly, two young adults who go on a killing spree in the 1950s (a dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate spree). It is auteur writer-director Terrence Malick’s feature debut – also commencing his career enduring and fruitful collaboration with production designer Jack Fisk. The film is beautifully shot, Malick working with three directors of photography Tak Fujimoto, Stevan Larner and Brian Probyn, showcasing Malick’s talent for deriving meaning juxtaposing his characters to nature. George Aliceson Tipton provides a good score as well. Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek star with Warren Oates in support, making up a strong cast. Sheen and Spacek give great performances as the young couple that goes off on a violent adventure to escape reality. Spacek in particular is very good, as Holly struggles with her attraction and fear to/of Kit. Above all else, Badlands is a visual and emotional experience and journey for the viewer evoking deep resonating feelings. Not only is it a must-see for fans of Malick’s work, but also for those looking for a film that strives for more than superficial meaning. Check out the trailer.

Available on DVD

Terrence Malick – Movies Spotlight – May 2011

Auteur writer-director Terrence Malick is known for making atmospheric existential films that incorporate beauty and nature into the story and feel of the narrative (even more so than character or plot is some cases). His films are always amazing to behold – meditations on their subject matter. Malick is interested in the artistry and emotional resonance of his visuals and characters. His new film The Tree of Life looks at a young boy in the 1950s who losses his innocence as he comes to terms with the world around him, his relationship with his father and growing up. Malick’s films are about meaning, each viewer deriving their own from the experience of watching them, and thus are polarizing. But regardless, it is undeniable that he is one of the master filmmakers working today.

Early Career:

Malick started his filmmaking career as a student, receiving his MFA from the AFI Conservatory in 1969. While attending the program, he made his first film – a short called Lanton Mills. He also met and made contacts in the program with the likes of Jack Nicholson and agent Mike Medavoy, who got Malick freelance writing work (he revised scripts, wrote an early draft of Dirt Harry and the produced script for Pocket Money). Malick continued to write, producing the screenplay for Deadhead Mills for Paramount Pictures, but the studio felt that it was an unreleaseable film. This experience changed Malick’s focus from purely a writer to wanting to direct his own scripts.

Badlands and Days of Heaven:

Malick’s feature debut came in 1973 with the film Badlands, about a young couple that goes on a crime spree in the 1950s starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek (it is sort of like an existential Bonnie and Clyde). The film was made independently for little money and had a troubled production, but when it finally was screened for critics it received wonderful reviews prompting Warner Bros. Pictures to buy the distribution rights for three times the film’s budget. It is a brilliant film that is beautiful in its photography, but terrifying as it peers into the souls of it characters – a jovial amoral young man and apathetic young woman. Next in 1978, Malick wrote and directed Days of Heaven, a story about a hot-tempered farm laborer running away from his past who convinces his love to marry their rich but dying boss so they can claim his fortune, but becomes jealous when she beings to love him. It stars Richard Gere, Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams. The story, much like Badlands, is poetic and more concerned with the feelings and emotional experience of the characters than plot, but here the story and characters seem to take a backseat to the truly amazing aesthetics (specifically the cinematography). Malick and D.P. Nestor Almendros shot almost the entire film during the “magic hour” – the hours between day and night early in the morning and late in the evening. It is magnificent (Ennio Morricone provides a good score as well).

The Vanishing:

After Days of Heaven’s success both at the Academy Awards and at Cannes, Malick began work on a new film for Paramount Pictures entitled Q, about the origins of life on Earth. But, during pre-production he suddenly left the project and moved to Paris, disappearing from public view (though, he has always been considered shy when it comes to the media). During his twenty year absence from Hollywood, he worked on a number of unproduced scripts and produced a few films.

Back After Twenty Years:

Malick finally returned to Hollywood in 1998 with The Thin Red Line, a war film focusing around the Pacific Theatre of WWII, specifically the conflict at Guadalcanal. The film boasts a fantastic cast (here is the full list) and Malick’s typical brilliant aesthetics (this time working with cinematographer John Toll). Malick shot over a million feet of film, and his original cut was barely under six hours (the theatrical cut runtime is 170 minutes). The film was critically praised and accompanied Steve Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan as a nominee for Best Picture at the 1999 Oscars (while both are WWII films, tonally they are almost 100% different, and initially I liked Spielberg’s more but now I favor Malick’s). He next began work on an article about Che Guevara, which incited Steven Soderbergh to offer Malick the chance to write and direct a film about Guevara that Soderbergh had been wanting to make with Benicio del Toro (though Soderbergh ultimately ended up writing and directing it). Malick accepted, but after a year-and-a-half the financing had not come through and Malick moved onto a project he was just as excited about – The New World. The film is a poetic and romantic interpretation of the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, with John Rolfe playing a major role as well. The cast is brilliant with tons of wonderful actors; it stars Colin Farrell, Q’orianka Kilcher and Christian Bale. Again like his other films, it is beautiful and atmospheric. Malick’s collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki garnered maybe the best visual work to date (and Malick is again working with Lubezki on The Tree of Life and his next project). The film deals with many themes including the corruption of nature by civilized man, colonialism – the stark juxtaposition of the Americas to England is crushing. The film received a very mixed reaction upon its release in 2005, but since then has come to be regarded as one of the best films of the decade (making a number of critic’s lists, including Mick LaSalle’s).

Producer:

Malick has also served as a producer on a number of independent films, most of which he worked on during his twenty year break from directing. The highlights include Yimou Zhang’s Happy Times, David Gordon Green’s Undertow, Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace, Hans Petter Moland’s The Beautiful Country, and the documentaries The Endurance and The Unforeseen.

Future Projects:

In 2012, Malick has a yet untitled film that he wrote and directed scheduled for release. It is a love story starring Rachel McAdams and Ben Affleck, while featuring Javier Barden, Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain, Olga Kurylenko, Amanda Peet, and Barry Pepper in supporting roles (making for a great cast). And Emmanuel Lubezki is shooting the film and Jack Fisk is doing the production design (which is awesome for those that enjoy amazing aesthetics; Fisk has worked on all of Malick’s films, production design on The Thin Red Line and on, and as art director on his first two).

Terrence Malick’s Career Highlights:

1.)    Badlands (1973) – Director* [DVD/Rent]

2.)    Days of Heaven (1978) – Director* [Blu-ray/DVD/Rent]

3.)    The Thin Red Line (1998) – Director* [Blu-ray/DVD/Rent]

4.)    The New World (2005) – Director* [Blu-ray/DVD/Rent]

*Editor’s Picks