Day 130: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Movie #83 – The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) - 161 min, cert PG.

Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) is the senior officer in charge of a large body of soldiers sent to a Japanese POW camp on the Burma railway. Upon his arrival at the camp, he immediately locks horns with Saito, the camp commander, who is insisting that the officers work alongside the enlisted men. Nicholson is insistent that this contravenes the Geneva Convention and refuses to comply. Despite spending weeks shut up in terrible conditions he refuses to back down and Saito realises that without his help the bridge he needs to have built by a certain day will never be finished on time, and so must back down himself. After his release, Nicholson wants to use the building of the bridge as an exercise to reinstall discipline amongst the men and decides to build the best bridge he can. Meanwhile, American soldier Shears (William Holden) who managed to escape from the camp shortly after Nicholson’s arrival has been sent back on a mission to blow the bridge up.

Although this is a film set against the backdrop of war, it is not really about war. It is about Col. Nicholson and the madness that the war has inspired in him. Everyone in the camp thought Saito was mad until Nicholson arrived, but Saito’s madness is not in the same league as Nicholson’s. He clings to his principles like a drowning man clings to a lifebelt. Saito will not back down, but Nicholson cannot, for without his precious principles he has nothing. He becomes transfixed on the idea of building the bridge to the best of his ability to the exclusion of everything else, including his duty as an officer in the British Army. Only at the very end does he have a moment of clarity where he realises that by trying to defend his bridge against the saboteurs he has crossed the line and is now actively assisting the enemy.

It is without doubt an excellent film. I’m no expert in the films of David Lean; I’ve only really got Lawrence of Arabia to compare it against, but I would rate this movie higher. I was slightly disappointed by the ending – I would rather have seen Nicholson redeem himself and blow the bridge up intentionally, rather than just falling on the plunger after being shot, but otherwise an excellent movie.

Score – 8/10. I’ve not seen a better performance from Alec Guinness.

Next up is Amadeus. I remember it coming out at the pictures, but it never really looked like my sort of film so I didn’t make the effort to go and see it.

Day 129: Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Movie #82 – Once Upon a Time in America (1984) - 229 min, cert 18.

David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson (Robert De Niro) was a racketeer in New York during the Prohibition, but flees for his life when the rest of his gang is wiped out. He is forced to return some 30 years later when some of the ghosts from his old life resurface.

Well it certainly isn’t anywhere near as good as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but neither is it as bad as Once Upon a Time in the West, De Niro’s performance alone would ensure that. At a ludicrous 3 hours 49 minutes, it is way, way too long. The action takes place during three quite separate periods in Noodles’ life. First as a young teenager growing up in Brooklyn, at the end of which he stabs a policeman and goes to prison. The next period is when he comes out of prison as an adult, and the final period is when he returns to Brooklyn after his self-imposed exile. The movie has a tendency to jump about a bit between the time periods, which I found a little hard to follow at times, but maybe I was just getting bored and wasn’t willing to concentrate enough on the plot.

De Niro is excellent, as always, and James Woods does a good turn as his accomplice. Joe Pesci’s appearance as a New York-Italian gangster is brief. He plays the role very well, but then he ought to since he never plays anything else!

Score – 5/10. It’s a reasonable film, and it certainly has its moments, but I’m not desperate to watch it again.

Next up is the classic war movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. This is another one of those movies which I’m not sure whether I’ve seen or not. I’ve certainly seen some if not most of it, but I may not have seen the whole thing.

Day 126: Some Like It Hot (1959)

Movie #81 – Some Like It Hot (1959) - 120 min, cert PG.

Joe (Tony Curtis) & Jerry (Jack Lemmon) are musicians trying to eke out a living in America during the Prohibition. While trying to borrow a car to get to a gig, they witness a mob execution and only narrowly manage to avoid being killed themselves. To escape the mob they dress up as women and join an all-girl band that is travelling to Florida. Joe falls in love with Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), the singer in the band and has to find a way of wooing her without blowing their cover. In the meantime, Jerry is trying to fend off the advances of an elderly millionaire who won’t take no for an answer.

It may be over 50 years old now, but it still made me laugh out loud on a few occasions, and left me with a big smile on my face, and you can’t ask more of it than that. Curtis & Lemmon are both on top form and play off each other brilliantly. Tony Curtis’ brilliant Cary Grant impression is the highlight of the film for me. That and, of course, Marilyn Monroe’s dress (well I’m only human).

There are numerous stories about how dreadful Monroe was to work with, and about how she was so unable to learn her lines that they had to be stuck around the set for her. But none of that comes across on screen. She appears to have a natural innocence, and it’s easy to see why she was such a sex symbol in her day.

Score – 9/10. An excellent film that’s hard to fault.

Next up is Once Upon a Time in America. I’ve not seen this film before, and I’ve no idea what to expect. I loved The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but I hated Once Upon a Time in the West. I imagine this movie will be somewhere between the two, but that still leaves an awful lot of scope.

Day 124: The Green Mile (1999)

Movie #80 – The Green Mile (1999) - 189 min, cert 18.

Set on the Death Row of an American prison. Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) is the chief warden and likes to maintain a peaceful environment for his inmates to pass their final days in quiet contemplation. He treats them well, and expects the same in return. One day, a simple-minded giant of a man named John Coffey is brought in, convicted of the brutal rape and murder of two young girls. It turns out that Coffey has a wonderful gift of healing, and he can cure pretty much anything by literally drawing it into himself, then expelling it into the air where it dissipates harmlessly. He cures Edgecomb of a painful urinary infection, and cures another inmates pet mouse after it has been cruelly stamped on by a particularly unpleasant warden. As the film goes on, Edgecomb becomes more and more convinced of Coffey’s innocence, and deeply troubled by the execution he knows he will have to perform.

I have this film on DVD, but hadn’t watched it for a long time. When I put this film on, the hour was late and I was quite tired. But all that disappeared within five minutes of the film started. Despite the film’s three hour running time, I remained rapt and fully alert all the way through it, and that has to be the sign of a good film. Yesterday’s Rashomon was less than half this length, but still took two days to watch as it didn’t grab my interest at all.

It’s difficult to review this film without comparing it to Shawshank Redemption. Both were directed by Frank Darabont, both were based on original material by Stephen King, and both are set in prisons in the first half of the twentieth century. The acting in this film is no less powerful than in Shawshank, Hanks gives as great a performance as ever. This may not be the sort of role he played in Forrest Gump, but it is quite similar to the character he portrayed in Saving Private Ryan. He’s an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation, something that Hanks seems to specialise in. This film is probably more typical of what most people associate with Stephen King, in that it has a strong supernatural undercurrent, something that was absent from Shawshank.

As I’ve said before, I’m a big fan of King’s work, and this is one of the few really good film adaptations of his work. Is it as good as Shawshank? Clearly most people think not, but I disagree. The acting is as good, the story is engaging, and the movie keeps the interest well, despite its length. I may be in the minority, but I think this is the better film.


Score – 10/10. One of the best so far. So 80 films in now, and L.A. Confidential and WALL-E have both dropped out of my top ten since the last check-in, having been replaced by The Green Mile at number 4 and Monty Python and the Holy Grail sneaking in at 10.

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

2.       Pulp Fiction (1994)

3.       Forrest Gump (1994)

4.       The Green Mile (1999)

5.       Amelie (2001)

6.       Fight Club (1999)

7.       The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

8.      Toy Story 3 (2010)

9.       The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

10.   Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Next up is a little light relief with Some Like it Hot. I’m not sure if I’ve watched it in its entirety before, but I’ve certainly seen most of it.

Day 123: Rashomon (1950)

Movie #79 – Rashomon (1950) - 88 min, cert 12.

This is essentially the story of a crime – the murder of a samurai and rape of his wife – as told in three separate ways by the three people involved. There’s a notorious bandit who has been accused of the crime, there’s the samurai’s wife, and then there’s the samurai himself who gives his version through a medium.

When I got to the end of this film I thought ‘What the hell was all that about?’ The film never actually shows you what happened, just three different versions of what happened, and leaves it up to you to decide for yourself what actually transpired. This all just seemed very unsatisfactory to me. I mean, I understand what Kursawa is trying to do. He’s making a point about how the same event can appear very different when seen from a different point of view. He’s saying it doesn’t matter what actually happened. What’s important is that, even though none of these witnesses are lying, their accounts are hugely different because their memories are tainted with the way they like to think of themselves and others, and that this is an interesting subject for a movie.

Except it isn’t. At least, not to me anyway. Maybe I missed something. But even if I did, I fell no urge to go back and watch it again to find out. I’d rather move on to the next.

Score – 2/10. Far too deep for me.

Next up is The Green Mile, a movie with a lot in common with the film at the top of the list, Shawshank Redemption. Same director, same author, same environment and set in the same period.

Day 121: Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Movie #78 – Singin’ in the Rain (1952) - 103 min, cert U.

Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) is a silent movie star in 1920s Hollywood. Suddenly ‘talkies’ come along and, not wishing to be left behind, his studio want to convert his latest silent movie to use the new technology. This would be fine, but for the fact that his long-time co-star, the beautiful Lina Lamont, has a terrible, screechy voice and is unable to get to grips with the requirements of sound. The movie is a disaster and everyone involved faces potential ruin if it is released, but release it they must as they are contractually obliged to do so. Lockwood, his long-time friend and musical director Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) and chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) hit upon a plan to transform the film into a musical, using Kathy to dub over Lina’s voice with her own, thereby rescuing the movie.

This is a great movie. It surely has to be the best musical of the era. Many of the musical numbers are well-established in the public consciousness, like Good Morning, Make ’em Laugh, You Were Meant for Me, and of course the title track itself. Gene Kelly has to be the greatest song and dance man that Hollywood ever produced and he is sublime in this movie. But Donald O’Connor is very nearly as good and the solo routine he does to Make ’em Laugh, including the ‘walking up wall thing’ immortalised in The Full Monty, is every bit as accomplished as Kelly’s famous routine through the rain-soaked streets. In fact, I struggle to watch this dance of Gene Kelly’s without thinking of Morecambe & Wise’s famous spoof. I find some of the films finest moments are when the two of them are dancing together.

Score – It has to be 10/10. It’s a marvellous film that will never lose its appeal.

Next up is Rashomon, a Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa. I found his Seven Samurai quite hard going, but this is much shorter at only 88 minutes.

Day 119: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Movie #77 – Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) - 119 min, cert 15.

It is Spain, 1944. Ofelia is a young girl whose father, a tailor, has recently died, so she and her heavily pregnant mother must go to live with her new stepfather, a particularly sadistic officer in Franco’s army. He is stationed in a camp in the woods where he is leading his men against the guerrilla tactics of the rebel forces hiding nearby. He appears unconcerned with either his new stepdaughter or his new wife, but only with the unborn son she carries inside her, so desperate is he for an heir. In the woods near the camp, Ofelia comes across an ancient labyrinth. A fairy comes to her and guides her into the heart of the labyrinth where she finds a frightening looking being who calls himself a faun. He tells her to escape this world she must complete three dangerous challenges. She duly sets about these challenges, in which she encounters strange and hideous monsters, while life in the military camp becomes more and more unbearable.

I actually rather enjoyed this movie. I thought it was going to be a bit too ‘children’s fantasy’ for me, but it isn’t at all. Maybe I should have realised from the 15 certificate, but this film is clearly not aimed at children at all. The violence is quite extreme and graphic at times. And this isn’t fantasy violence, this is the real horrors perpetrated by the Spanish officer Capitan Vidal upon the people unfortunate enough to fall into his captivity. In one particularly gruesome scene, he beats a young man in the face with the base of a bottle so hard that his skull breaks and his face caves in.

The main reason I enjoyed this film was that it kept my interest. If I’m going to commit 2 hours or so into watching a movie, then I expect to be entertained during that time, and if I’m getting bored, then I’m clearly no longer being entertained, and the film has failed to deliver. This film kept me entertained all the way through. I cared about the characters and wanted to know what was going to happen to them. As far as I’m concerned, that makes it a good film. Whether it’s good enough to warrant watching again in the future, I’m not so sure.

Score – 8/10.

Next up is Singin’ in the Rain. I’ll probably watch this with my youngest son, as he’s keen on dancing and likes the routines in old musicals like these. I’ve seen it before, but not for a long time.

Day 117: Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Movie #76 – Cinema Paradiso (1988) - 124 min, cert PG.

A respected Italian film director, Salvatore Di Vita, hears from his mother for the first time in thirty years to find out that Alfredo, a friend, has died. We then flashback to Salvatore’s childhood which he spent living in a small town in Sicily. There was no television, so the entire village used to gather at the local cinema. Salvatore fell in love with the cinema and the movies it showed and pestered Alfredo the projectionist until he reluctantly agreed to teach him how to run the equipment in his booth. The two become close friends, and when the cinema is destroyed by a terrible fire, it is the young Salvatore that pulls Alfredo from the flames. He saves Alfredo’s life, but the old man is left blind. The cinema is rebuilt, new equipment is installed, and despite his tender age, Salvatore is the only person in town capable of running it so he gets the job.

I think the more into movies, particularly old movies, you are, the more you’ll get out of this one. It’s a movie with a deep affection for the industry, so anyone who shares that affection will empathise with the main characters. Plus, it is undoubtedly a well-made movie. So it ticks all the right boxes for the movie critics and reviewers who all loved it. Personally, I found it quite watchable, and pleasant enough. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again, and I’m not sure that I feel strongly enough about the characters to want to sit through the extra 51 minutes of additional material in the Director’s Cut which fills in some of the gaps in the story.

Score – 6/10. Pleasant enough, but I’m just not into old films enough to get the most out of it.

Next up is the bizarre-looking Spanish offering Pan’s Labyrinth. It looks pretty weird but I’ll give it a go.

Day 116: Raging Bull (1980)

Movie #75 – Raging Bull (1980) - 129 min, cert 18.

This movie tells the life story of Jake LaMotta, the middleweight boxing champion, based on his auto-biography. It concentrates mainly on his relationships with his wife and his brother.

When I saw this film coming up in the list, I asked a friend who had seen it what they thought of it. They described it as ‘better than Rocky. Having now watched it myself, I find this a strange comparison. The two films are entirely different. Rocky is a movie about boxing, Raging Bull is not. It’s a film about a man who happens to be a boxer. If I was going to compare it to another film, I’d use The Treasure of the Sierra Madre which I saw last week. Both are films about men whose lives spiral out of control due to paranoia. Bogart’s madness derives from his greed, while De Niro’s comes from his low self-esteem. He assumes that his young and beautiful wife would rather have an affair than be faithful to him and treats everyone she speaks to as a suspected lover, including his own brother.

I found it quite slow to get going, In fact I started watching this film yesterday, but 22 minutes in, I was so bored that I switched it off and went and did something else instead. I was probably just in the wrong frame of mind for it. After all, 22 minutes doesn’t give it much of a chance. Part of the problem was that Joe Pesci has reprised this character so many times since then – Goodfellas, Casino, Once Upon a Time in America, etc. that the original seems like old hat. It just felt like I wasn’t watching anything new, and that I’d seen it all before. It was just another bunch of guys from Little Italy who beat on their wives, hang out with their mistresses and demand RESPECT from everyone. This was a boxer rather than a mobster but little else was different.

Of course I’m judging this movie largely against the movies that came after it, which is a little unfair of me, but that’s how I’m coming to it, so that’s how I have to view it.

Score – 6/10. If I’d seen it twenty years ago then I might have rated it higher.

Next up is Cinema Paradiso which is the first of three foreign films out of the next four on the list. I’ve not seen it, but I remember it seemed to be playing almost constantly at my local art house cinema in Brighton when I was at university. I never felt the urge to watch it then, but maybe I should have. We’ll see.

Day 114: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Movie #74 – Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) - 91 min, cert 15.

The Monty Python team reunited some years after wrapping up their Flying Circus to put together this homage to King Arthur and his Knight of the Round Table. Arthur (Graham Chapman) is charged by God to gather together a band of knights and go in search of the Holy Grail.

I’m a big fan of the Monty Python team and their particular brand of humour. I’m a little surprised to see it higher up the list than The Life of Brian, but then I suspect that the score for that film has been dragged down slightly by the religious extremists who see it as a heinous blasphemy, but more of that later, when I watch that film. Personally, I prefer The Holy Grail. I find a lot of the sketches more memorable, like the French taunter, and the constitutional peasants. I must confess, I used to listen to some of their LPs ad nauseam in my youth, and can still to this day recite many of their sketches verbatim.

Basically, if you like watching grown men doing very, very silly things in an extremely straight-faced way, then you will love this film. If you don’t, then you’re probably American and should give this film a wide berth.

Score – 10/10, obviously.

Next up is Robert De Niro’s classic turn in Raging Bull, which I’ve never seen. It’s another of those movies that I feel I probably should have.

Day 113: The Prestige (2006)

Movie #73 – The Prestige (2006) - 130 min, cert 12A.

Two magicians are working the stage circuit at the close of the nineteenth century, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). They used to work together until a mistake by Borden caused the death of Angier’s wife during an underwater escape trick. Angier cannot forgive the mistake and the two become bitter rivals, each constantly trying to undermine and outdo the other. When Borden comes up with a new trick which he calls ‘The Transported Man’ where he appears to move instantly from one side of the stage to the other, Angier becomes obsessed with finding out its secret so he can replicate and improve it.

It was quite refreshing to go into a modern movie knowing absolutely nothing about it. I found it hugely enjoyable. Christopher Nolan handles the intricate plot twists with his usual aplomb, just like he did in Memento and Inception, and he keeps the audience guessing until the very end of the film. A certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required when Nikola Tesla (David Bowie of all people) apparently breaks at least one of the fundamental laws of physics, but I don’t have a problem with that. This is fiction after all, and it’s no more of a stretch than the time-travelling DeLorean in Back to the Future.

Score – 9/10. Maybe not an absolute classic, but hugely enjoyable nonetheless.

Next up is Monty Python and the Holy Grail, another of my personal favourites. The Python humour is not for everyone, but it’s right up my street.

Day 112: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Movie #72 – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) - 126 min, cert PG.

Fred Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is down on his luck in Mexico, so he teams up with a younger man, Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) and a grizzled old prospector named Howard (Walter Huston) and they head out into the mountains to dig for gold. As the gold starts to accumulate, Dobbs begins to trust the other men less and less. Paranoia takes him over and he convinces himself that the others are out to steal his share.

The highlight of this film for me was watching Bogart’s portrayal of Dobbs and his descent into paranoia and madness. Before embarking on this epic project, my experience of movies from the black & white era was extremely limited. I’ve probably seen more in the last four months than in the previous twenty years. So my only exposure to Bogart has been in Casablanca and it was hard to tell from that why he is held in such high regard. Well, now I know. He really throws himself into this thoroughly despicable character and captures him perfectly.

The plot is very dark, but then it’s about one man’s breakdown and anything else is purely incidental. I quite liked the ending. It seemed to sum the film up very well.

It’s also got one of those famous lines that I’ve often heard quoted, but have never known its source. A Mexican bandit says ‘Badges? We don’t need to steenking badges!’ Well, he doesn’t actually say that exactly, but that’s how it’s usually misquoted. The last one of these lines that I came across was the very last line of Sunset Boulevard, where Gloria Swanson says ‘Alright Mr De Mille, I’m ready for my close-up now.’

Score – 8/10.

Next up is The Prestige about which I know absolutely nothing. I don’t know who’s in it, what it’s about or anything. It must have completely passed me by when it was released in 2006.

Day 111: Back to the Future (1985)

Movie #71 – Back to the Future (1985) - 116 min, cert PG.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has a lousy home life. His dad is a wimp who is constantly bullied by his overbearing boss and his mum is a nagging alcoholic. Rather than spend time at home, he hangs out with the local mad professor, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). One night, Doc Brown unveils his latest invention to Marty – a fully operational time machine made out of a DeLorean sports car. Things don’t go to plan and Marty ends up transported back in time 30 years to 1955 when his parents were teenagers themselves. He accidentally interferes with their first meeting and must repair their relationship to preserve his own existence. At the same time, he and a younger Doc Brown are trying to find a way to get him back to 1985.

This was one of the best family movies of the 1980s and it still holds up just as well today. In fact if anything, it seems to get better with age. The casting is superb. All the actors play their characters perfectly, particularly Lloyd & Fox and it’s hard to see how the movie could have worked with anyone else in those roles. But it’s the way Robert Zemeckis handles the delicate balance between comedy, drama, action, sci-fi & nostalgia so well. He never lets the film lean too heavily towards any one of those elements, and the result is a beautifully crafted piece of entertainment which leaves you with a big smile on your face.

Score – 10/10. It’s a faultless piece of cinema.

Next up is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a Humphrey Bogart film about gold prospectors, but that’s as much as I know.