Day 170: The Great Escape (1963)

Movie #111 – The Great Escape (1963) - 172 min, cert PG.

The movie tells the true story of the mass escape attempt from maximum-security POW camp Stalag Luft III. The Germans have gathered all the prisoners with a reputation for making escape attempts in one supposedly escape-proof camp, thereby putting ‘all the rotten eggs in one basket’. However, by employing such a tactic, they have underestimated the combined ingenuity and resourcefulness of this group of men, who promptly come up with a plan to break out no less than 250 prisoners in a single night. They dig a series of three tunnels, codenamed Tom, Dick & Harry, out from the prison huts, under the wire towards the trees beyond. Meanwhile they forge identification papers, put together civilian outfits and gather intelligence on the surrounding area.

This is undoubtedly a classic war movie. The all-star cast is impressive – Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Donald Pleasance, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, David McCallum, Gordon Jackson and more. The film can be essentially split into two parts – the planning of the escape, and then the escape itself and its aftermath as the prisoners who made it out attempt to evade recapture. The first part of the film is fairly light-hearted with the POWs running rings around their guards, fooling them at every turn. There is less comedy in the second part once the escapees are outside the controlled environment of the camp as we see many of them recaptured or shot or both.

It’s curious in some ways that the whole incident is portrayed in such a positive manner, as if the escape was a glorious triumph for the Allied forces over their German captors. The reality is that because of the tunnel being too short, of the 250 that were supposed to escape, only 76 made it out of the camp. Of those 76, fifty were either killed trying to avoid recapture or executed by the Gestapo, 23 were successfully recaptured, and only three made it back to their own lines. I suppose, in some ways, it was a success as the prime objective of the exercise was to tie up large numbers of Germans scouring the countryside for errant POWs, and this it accomplished. But it still seems a bit of a stretch to me to hail it as the spectacular achievement that this movie seems to do.

But none of that detracts from my enjoyment of it. It’s a lot of fun cheering the good guys and booing the bad guys and wondering what might have been had things turned out slightly differently.

Score – 8/10. A good fun war movie, and there aren’t many of them out there.

Next up is a movie I’ve never seen – Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. It’s well-known for someone playing chess with Death, but that’s all I know about it.

Day 168: Princess Mononoke (1997)

Movie #110 – Princess Mononoke (1997) - 134 min, cert PG.

Set in ancient Japan at a time when much of the country is comprised of isolated villages run by feudal lords, and the smelting of iron was a new technology, one such village is attacked by a rampaging boar spirit. Prince Ashitaka (Billy Crudup) successfully defends the village against the evil spirit, but becomes contaminated by it in the process. The wise woman of the village tells him that the infection will kill him unless he is healed by the Spirit of Woods who lives far to the West. Ashitaka sets off to find this spirit, and becomes involved in a conflict between an iron working village, led by Lady Eboshi (Minnie Driver), and the animal spirits of the forest, led by San (Claire Danes), the Princess Mononoke of the title. The situation is further complicated when a rival village looks to take over the forge while Eboshi is distracted. Ashitaka must negotiate a peace between the various warring factions while finding a cure for his infection.

The movie deals with the price of progress, and how man is unable to develop technologically without there being a knock-on effect on the environment. There are no clear-cut good guys and bad guys in this movie. All the characters seem driven by honest intentions. Even Lady Eboshi, the biggest villain of the piece, is only trying to do her best to ensure a prosperous future for her people.

I established that I’m not the World’s greatest anime fan, when Spirited Away completely failed to move me, so I wasn’t expecting this to do much for me either. I certainly found this more entertaining than Spirited Away, and it held my attention pretty well. I wouldn’t say I’d been converted to the genre by any means, but perhaps I won’t approach subsequent films in this style with quite so much trepidation. I found the plot a little easier to follow, and the characters easier to empathise with.

Score – 5/10. Better than Spirited Away, but I’m still not an anime fan. Ten more movies have passed since I last updated my personal top ten, so it’s time to revisit it. The only movies to achieve full marks were Sin City and Die Hard, and I think they should both make the list, which now looks like this:

1.       The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

2.       Die Hard (1988)

3.       Pulp Fiction (1994)

4.       Forrest Gump (1994)

5.       The Sting (1973)

6.       The Green Mile (1999)

7.       Amelie (2001)

8.      Fight Club (1999)

9.       The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

10.   Sin City (2005)

Next up is a bank holiday classic – The Great Escape. My 9-year-old son quite fancies seeing this one, so I shall watch it with him.

Day 165: Die Hard (1988)

Movie #109 – Die Hard (1988) - 131 min, cert 18.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is a New York cop, visiting Los Angeles for Christmas to see his estranged wife and their kids. She works as a high-flying executive for a Japanese-run company in a high-rise office block. John calls in to see her at her office where a Christmas party is in full swing. While he’s there, the place is suddenly overrun by a gang of armed terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman). They gather all the staff together in the lobby, but John manages to escape up the stairwell to another floor. Thereafter, he wages a one-man war against the mercenaries with little help from the authorities who gather outside.

I have watched this film more often than any other on this list. Indeed, probably more than any other film full stop. It’s a film I can watch again and again without ever getting bored of it. This is an action movie in its purest form. The action is non-stop, the dialogue is crisp and witty, the hero is intelligent, and the villain is too. The stunts and special effects are awesome, and the plot is clever, but easy to follow.

Bruce Willis was ideally cast as McClane. Fit enough to carry off what must have been a physically challenging role, but with just the right amount of comic timing to pull off the constant barrage of quips and one-liners that became his signature in Moonlighting. Alan Rickman is also superb as Gruber. The plot requires him to get a lot of screen time, and this might have been a problem with a lesser actor, but Rickman is certainly as good as Willis, probably better.

Score – 10/10. The perfect action movie.

Next up is more Japanese anime with Princess Mononoke. I wasn’t impressed by Spirited Away, but maybe this will be more my cup of tea.

Day 164: Sin City (2005)

Movie #108 – Sin City (2005) - 124 min, cert 18.

Set in the fictitious Basin City, the movie consists essentially of three entirely separate stories. In one, Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is an aging cop trying to put away one last bad guy, a paedophile, before his dicky heart forces him into retirement. In another, Marv (Mickey Rourke) is a tough guy who wakes up next to a dead prostitute and goes on a bloody quest to track down the person who killed her and tried to frame him for it. In the third, Dwight (Clive Owen) is guy who finds himself struggling to maintain the delicate balance of power between the cops and the prostitutes in the red-light district.

This is a truly awesome film. Robert Rodriguez brings Frank Miller’s comic books to life with a skill that has never been approached either before or since. Every frame of film looks as if it has been lifted straight out of the graphic novels and allowed to move. Every scene drives the plot forward, and the pace is relentless. To a comic fan like myself, this has to rank as the greatest comic book adaptation to date, and there have been many.

Score – 10/10. Style and substance in abundance. If you haven’t seen this, you really should.

Next up is Bruce Willis again in the movie that made him a superstar – Die Hard.

Day 163: Rebecca (1940)

Movie #107 – Rebecca (1940) - 130 min, cert PG.

While Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) is holidaying in the South of France, he meets a young woman (Joan Fontaine) working as a companion to rich old lady and they fall in love. They get married and take up residence together in Manderlay, his ancestral family mansion in Cornwall. The house, however, is full of memories of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, who died tragically in a boating accident. Max was, by all accounts, devastated by the loss, and has never really recovered. The housekeeper at Manderlay, Mrs Danvers, is clearly still mourning her previous mistress’ death and makes her new mistress aware of her inferiority in no uncertain terms, undermining and belittling her at every opportunity. Things come to a head when a wrecked boat is discovered that still contains Rebecca’s body, and Max is plunged back into despair.

This is not typical Hitchcock fare. He was a master of the suspense thriller, and while there are elements of that here, particularly in the middle section when the new Mrs de Winter is being terrorised by Mrs Danvers, it is predominantly a love story. Hitchcock was adapting a well-known book, so he had little room for manoeuvre within the plot. This was also his first movie after relocating to America from Britain, so he was probably keen to establish a solid foundation by giving the studio what was expected. Still, the movie won two Oscars, including Best Picture, and had 9 other nominations, so he must have done a pretty good job.

There were a couple of interesting tricks that Hitchcock used to emphasise the power that Rebecca has over her successor, even in death. Joan Fontaine’s character is never named in the film. She is always known as the second Mrs de Winter. Also, we never see Rebecca in the film. There are no pictures or portraits of her in the house, so the audience is left to imagine her beauty.

Overall, I enjoyed the film and it certainly deserves its place in the Top 250. But from a personal point of view, I wouldn’t rave over it.

Score – 7/10. Enjoyable enough, but not really my cup of tea.

Next up is Robert Rodriguez’s stylistic Sin City. I have this on DVD and am looking forward to watching it again.

Day 160: Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (1989)

Movie #106 – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - 127 min, cert PG.

Indy is back. This time he is seeking the Holy Grail, the cup the Jesus used at the Last Supper. He has to enlist the assistance of the World’s leading expert on the subject who happens to be none other than his father, Henry Jones snr (Sean Connery). Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) also tags along for the ride. Again there are Nazis also after the same artefact. In fact, all in all, the plot runs along very similar lines to Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It’s a lot of fun, as sequels go, but I really don’t see how it deserves a place in the Top 250. It is certainly better than the second film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but that’s not saying much. Sean Connery clearly has a lot of fun hamming it up as the bookish Henry Jones, and it is probably his performance as much as anything that lifts the movie to the position that it finds itself in. But, at the end of the day, it’s a second sequel that just rehashes the same material as the original. There is nothing new here, just a studio cashing in on a tried and tested formula.

Score – 7/10. Pretty good as sequels go, but still just a sequel.

Next up is Hitchcock’s Rebecca. This is another one of those films that I last saw many years ago, and can’t remember much about.

Day 159: Return of the Jedi (1983)

Movie #105 – Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) - 134 min, cert U.

Han Solo’s friends must rescue him from Jabba the Hut’s palace where he is still frozen in carbonite, then rendezvous with the rest of the Rebel Alliance to launch an assault on a new Death Star which is being built. A small team consisting of Han, Luke, Leia and the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO must take out the force-field generator on the nearby forest moon of Endor, while Lando and Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon lead the main attack fleet.

I prefer this film to The Empire Strikes Back. Clearly, the relative positions of the two films in the list implies that I’m very much in the minority with this point of view. This is a very jolly, feel-good film, with a nice happy Hollywood ending, while the other is much darker. There’s more action in this film, which appeals to me, and I like the Ewoks – they’re cute, cuddly and a bit of fun.

Score – 8/10. Not as good as the first one, but better than the second.

Next up is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I saw this film when it first came out, but I don’t recall it being good enough to merit a place on this list.