Ken Hurley
I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Critic, Roger Ebert reviewing the movie North
Everybody’s a critic. And, that’s how it should be. Former New York Times chief film critic, A.O. Scott
I found myself terrified watching the Early Show at 4:00 p.m. on a small black and white television set at Robert’s house when I was 10 years old. I could not watch the TV set full on. I had to peek through the small air holes in my baseball cap I held over my face.
I didn’t know my afternoon would include watching a movie about shipwrecked castaways on an uncharted island who stumble upon an ex-Nazi mad scientist, his disfigured wife, and a colony of enslaved, beauty-draining monsters. It was a frightening 1950s schlock-fest. Robert and his brother Russell thought the movie, She Demons, was comedic brilliance. While they giggled at every low-budget explosion and awkwardly choreographed fight, I was busy trying to bury myself into the lime green shag carpet. The terrifying expressions these hideous She Demons made were relived by me during my worst nightmares for months. I thought the mad scientist’s henchman would materialize behind the couch and drag me into a bamboo cage. It all seemed real to me. I barely touched my soda and guarded the popcorn bowl like a makeshift shield. When the film ended with the volcano actively blowing up the Nazi laboratory as the heroes fled on a tiny rowboat, I took a deep deep breath that I had been holding for seventy-six minutes.
That’s what movies are supposed to do. Tell a story that combines visual art, music, oftentimes special effects, and human performance, and move you in a manner that makes you feel. Maybe good. Maybe bad. Maybe happy. Maybe sad. Maybe scared. Maybe mad. But feel! Sometimes, think, too.
Unlike authors, filmmakers do not just describe a setting. Filmmakers construct it visually to manipulate human emotions through the artful use of camera angles, lighting, sound design, music, pacing, editing, directing, and acting, and hopefully it all begins with a good script. Filmmakers get you to suspend your disbelief and can turn abstract ideas into visceral, shared experiences.
Movies can also serve as a cultural time capsule. They capture the anxieties, hopes, dreams, technological limits, and social values of the era in which they were created. When a film succeeds, it creates an empathetic bridge across time, allowing the viewer in the present day to feel a connection with characters from a completely different time period.
Whether a film is a flawless masterpiece or a fascinating failure, filmmakers remain humanity’s most influential storytellers because they don’t just tell us stories — they make us live them.
One of the first books I remember enjoying as a boy was Jack London’s, The Call of the Wild. It took me through Alaskan adventures with the main character John Thornton and his dog Buck. I loved it. Then a few years later I saw on television the 1935 movie The Call of the Wild starring Clark Gable as John Thornton and Loretta Scott as Claire Blake. What?! Claire Blake? There is no Clair Blake in the book! She was created specifically by the filmmakers to be the love interest of Clark Gable. Box office gold! I learned later that their onscreen chemistry was so effectively real due to their real life offscreen love affair. The movie was much more about the star’s interactions and much less about the adventures of Buck and his ultimate call of the wild. Both the book and the movie were enjoyable. However, it was the first time I realized that filmmakers do not have to honor an original manuscript after they have purchased the rights.
When you think of great buddy films you might think of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon series, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in Rush Hour, Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Gena Davis and Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise. I’ll wager you didn’t think of the stars of successful films titled, Buck Privates in the Navy, Ride ‘Em Cowboy, Rio Rita, Pardon My Sarong, or, Who Done It? That’s right, Abbott and Costello were ranked among the top box office stars from 1941 to 1951. They defined disparate dynamic duos navigating comedic adventures together, and the public loved them. Even Jerry Seinfeld has confessed that he based the format for Seinfeld on the Abbott and Costello Show.
There are so many top-notch movies in a wide range of genres that it is impossible to list them all, even if I could remember them. So, here are a few of my favorite movies that I’d like to include in this piece of chit.
First, I am unabashedly a huge fan of animated films because they offer limitless creative freedom, which allows the filmmakers to build visually stunning, imaginative worlds that are impossible to achieve with live-action films; while also evoking complex emotions, abstract ideas, and artsy, stylized, aesthetically delightful, illustrative action.
Consider the French film, The Triplets of Belleville (2003) which has a distinctive and surreal animation. The journey story is told not through dialogue but through music, pantomime, and extraordinarily detailed yet exaggerated animation. A.O. Scott said, “[This] may be the oddest movie of the year, by turns sweet and sinister, insouciant and grotesque, invitingly funny and forbiddingly dark. It may also be one of the best, a tour de force of ink-washed, crosshatched mischief and unlikely sublimity.”
Here are just a few other animated films that I praise as good: The Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Away (2019), Flow (2024), Ratatouille (2007), The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Inside Out (2015), What’s Opera, Doc? (1957), Fantasia (1940), Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
And now, some good live-action film recommendations from lil’ ol’ me.
Schindler’s List (1993) made a tremendous humanitarian impact. It was shot almost entirely in black and white to evoke historical reality. However, there was a bit of faded red on a child’s coat that I suppose represented lost innocence and the blood of the Holocaust.
The Godfather (1972) A young Francis Ford Coppola made a cultural impact when he took Mario Puzo’s crime novel and turned it into a Shakespearean tragedy about family, power, and corruption by using excellent pacing, moody lighting, character tensions, great acting, and of course, a great script.
Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles’s masterpiece is probably cited in the top five greatest movies of all time more often than I know. It managed to keep the depth of field broad by keeping the foreground and background in sharp focus simultaneously through unique uses of light and shadows. It had a non-linear narrative which at the time was new as it revealed a complex story regarding the empty nature of the American dream through conflicting flashbacks. One word, “Rosebud.”
And finally, Duck Soup (1933) which I consider to be Marx Brothers’ finest film due to its absurd parody regarding politics, financing war, and going to war. Its political satire is pure comedic mayhem.
Good movies are associated with the filmmaker, who is often cited as the director. So, I offer the following as some of my preferred “A film by” directors: Steven Spielberg (Jurassic Park, Minority Report, ET, Close Encounters), Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator), David Fincher (The Game, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Se7en), Tim Burton (Beetlejuice, Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands), Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, Gangs of New York), Alfred Hitchcock (The 39 Steps, Rebecca, Rear Window, The Birds).
Next there are the amazingly talented auteurs who both write or co-write and direct their films. Billy Wilder (The Apartment, Some Like it Hot, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Double Indemnity), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, Inception, Interstellar, Memento), Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, Hateful Eight, Django Unchained), Lana Wachowski (The Matrix, Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, Persona, Fanny and Alexander), Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey, Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Little Women, Barbie), Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Match Point, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Purple Rose of Cairo, Blue Jasmine, Midnight in Paris), Agnès Varda (Cléo from 5 to 7, Faces Places), Joel and Ethan Cohen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, True Grit), Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood, Licorice Pizza, One Battle After Another), James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, Avatar). And, soooo many more good filmmakers!
However, there are far more bad, unlikeable movies than there are good movies. Mostly for their failure to execute technical and narrative competence. If you’ve ever seen the movie Cats (2019), you know that it fails on every conceivable level. Despite its huge budget and star studded cast, it is a whacky, unbelievable, unsettling, blend of live-action actors and digital fur technology that lacks narrative momentum, editing logic, and spatial consistency. The original Broadway musical ran for 18 years and was a huge success. Skip the flick.
The film North (1994) is among the many universally accepted bad movies. Directed by the late Rob Reiner. (An otherwise good filmmaker!) Stars Elijah Wood, in the title role, with Jon Lovitz, Jason Alexander, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Kathy Bates, Faith Ford, Graham Greene, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Reba McEntire, John Ritter, and Abe Vigoda. Bruce Willis narrates and plays different roles. Scarlett Johansson made her film debut in North when she was nine years old. A good cast, right? But the outdated and offensive stereotypes, combined with bizarre inconsistent humor, a poor screenplay, choppy editing, and the frustrating final reveal that the entire story was just a dream gets this movie panned by critics and audiences.
Then, there is “WTF.” These movies leave you bewildered wondering which numnuck decided this would be a good idea? The Room (2003) is a technically disastrous, out-of-focus, film with nonsensical dialogue, and erratic subplots that are introduced and then forgotten. Co-starring the boom mic. It is worse than bad. Yet, somehow, it has found its way to be considered a cult classic because it is so bad some people think that’s what makes it good. WTF!
In “The End” the Good, the Bad, and the WTF are all part of the movie viewing experience. The “Good” films provide the emotional anchors and artistic milestones that legitimize cinema as high art. The “Bad” films remind filmmakers and audiences of the importance of discipline, structure, restraint, and the need for a good script. The “WTF” films provide pure unfiltered trash that may still find an engaged audience. There is a genre for everyone in which a story is told where the filmmakers want to make you feel. They all remind us that filmmaking is largely experimental, which is why you take your chances when you give two hours of your life to watch a movie and enjoy a bucket of popcorn.
Time for lunch. Duck soup, anyone?
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