Still in The Netherlands, when I studied at the Technical University of Eindhoven TUE and then did my PhD at the Institute for Perception Research IPO/TUE, I was member of a group which organized films at the youth center OOC-Zienema (zien is Dutch for seeing). Every week we had to select and show a film, some 50 per year, so at that time, from 1977-1987, I saw some 500 films. That was 40 years ago, so I cannot remember all films, like the ones by Fellini and Pasolini and Kurosawa and and and. So here I list what I re-saw later and can remember best.
All films by Greenaway, all by Tarantino, all by Jarmusch, all by the Coen brothers, all by ... too many, really.
The Italians: Rossellini, Scola, Taviani, Fellini, Visconti, Rosi, Risi, Pasolini, de Sica, Bertolucci, Ferreri, Antonioni and Comencini. Examples from Pasolini (yes, I had to look them up in wikipedia, my memory is getting rusty, but I have seen them all!): Accatone, Mamma roma, Uccellacci i uccellini, Il vangelo secondo Matteo, Edipo re, Teorema, Il decameron and I raconti di Canterbury.
The French: Resnais, Renoir, Chabrol, Varda, Melville, Bresson, Truffaut, Malle, and of course Godard. One example: L'armée des ombres (Shadow army) from Melville, 1969, with ao Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret. This film was recently restaurated.
Another restaurated film I recently saw was Macbeth from Roman Polanski, after William Shakespeare's tragedy, from 1971. When I was still 20 years young :-) This is in stark contrast with the 1967 film The fearless vampire killers, or, Dance of the vampires, with Polanski himself, Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowan), and Sharon Tate.
May 26: Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the gallows), Louis Malle, 1958, with ao Jeanne Moreau. The music was not composed, but improvised by Miles Davis (trumpet) while seeing the images. This was a revolution!
Recent French films: (1) This life of mine by Sophie Fillières, from 2014, she died at 58, and (2) Paris, 13th District, by Jacques Audiard, from 2021.
The Germans: Wenders, Fassbinder, Herzog, von Trotta, Schlöndorff, Emmerich, Syberberg, Eichinger, Reitz. One example: Der Untergang (Downfall) from Hirschbiegel, 2004, about Hitlers last days in the Bunker. With ao Bruno Ganz.
A special case: Herbert Achternbusch, because I like his Bavarian humor and the language. His films Das Gespenst (The gost) in which Jesus climbs off the cross and goes to swim with a nun, an absolute scandal in 1983, Der Depp (The idiot) about CSU politician Franz Josef Strauss, from 1983, and Die Atlantikschwimmer (The atlantic swimmers) from 1976, in which a small lake is crossed by swimmers, accompanied by a small rowing boat. The film Bierkampf (Beer battle) is about the excessive beer consumption at the Oktoberfest. Dressed as a sort-of policeman, Herbert, played by Achternbusch himself, annoys people by stealing their Bretzels and drinking from their Mass (huge beer glasses), until he is so drunk that they start to fight.
From Japan I only remember Ran, Yojimbo, Sanjuro and Seven Samurai from Kurosawa, and Harakiri from Kobayashi. I loved actor Toshirô Mifune.
In the Italian films, what stays with you is the extreme poverty in the suburbs. Like in Ladri di biciclette (bicicle thieves) from Vittorio de Sica, 1948. Or Rocco e i suio fratelli (Rocco and his brothers) from Luchino Visconti (1960). I have more problems with senseless cruelty, like in The painted bird from Marhoul, 2019; American psycho from Harron, 2000, after the book by Bret Easton Ellis - the only book I have ever thrown away; and Last exit to Brooklyn from Edel, 1989. I have less problems with e.g. resistance films like Shadow Army from Melville (1969) or Roma città aperta (Rome, open city) from Rossellini (1945).
For romantic people only: Brief Encounter from David Lean, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, with an impeccable Oxbridge narration. Claude Lanzman (Shoah) wrote in his biography that he and Simone de Beauvoir had to cry after seeing the film.
One of my favourite directors is Wim Wenders. One early film I adore is the road movie Im laufe der Zeit (Kings of the road) with Rüdiger Vogler and Hanns Zischler. Later films are Der Himmel über Berlin (The wings of desire or Les ailes du desir - I have seen it in three languages), the American Trilogy consisting of Alice in de Städten (Alice in the cities), Falsche Bewegung (The wrong move) and Paris Texas. The latter with Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski, the daughter of the freak Klaus Kinski. I absolutely adore the cinematography (camera work) of Robby Müller. I almost forgot Der amerikanischer Freund (The american friend), Hammett, and the more recent Perfect days.
I am fond of references to other films in films. Tarantino also. As an example here, in Wenders’ film Der Himmel über Berlin we see Solveig Dommartin (she died at 45) as artist Marion in the Zirkus Alekan. Henri Alekan is famous for films like La belle et la bête (The beauty and the beast) from 1946, but also from his cinematography (camera work) in Wenders’ Der stand der Dinge (The state of things) of 1982, and of course in Der Himmel über Berlin of 1987.
Jim Jarmusch, for example Mistery train, in which we see the bellboy complain about his uniform and Screaming Jay Hawkins, as reception clerc, say you look like a mosquito-legged chimpanzee, hah. In this film we see Steve Buscemi, who we later see in The Sopranos and in Tarantino's Reservoir dogs, as well as in the Coens’ film Fargo along with Macy and McDormand.
I saw Buscemi, together with Banderas, Hajek, de Almeida and Tarantino, also in Desperado, from Los Hooligans Production (no, not Despeinada, from Mexico's sixtees band Los Hooligans). After Miramax, Tarantino often made films with A Band Apart and co-produced with Los Hooligans Production, created by Robert Rodriguez in 1991. From 2000 transformed into Troublemaker Studios. Wellknown LH and TS films: El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn (FDTD), FDTD 2: Texas Blood Money, FDTD 3: The Hangman's Daughter, Sin City and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.
Further reading: A Band Apart about Quentin's films and his collaboration with Robert Rodriguez. If you do not know Rodriguez, do not forget the old The Tarantino Archives on Rodriguez and now the new The Robert Rodriguez Archives.
Back to Fargo: in the first Fargo season, we see Billy Bob Thornton, who we can later see in the film Bandits with Bruce Willis and Cate Blanchett. Good films are also Youth, with Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano and Jane Fonda, Lucky, the last film with Harry Dean Stanton, A walk in the woods, with Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson, and The Straight Story.
This is a road movie, and the only David Lynch film without freaks and a G-rating (all ages), with Richard Farnsworth, Harry Dean Stanton and Sissy Spacek (yes, from Brian De Palma's Carrie). The film debuted in Cannes in 1999, but was shot in 1998 when Farnsworth, as Alvin Straight, had already prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He lived on a farm in Lincoln, New Mexico. When he was partially paralysed and in hellish pain, he committed suicide at 80 in 2000. He shot himself, he was not granted a humane death by euthanasia. MAID, medical aid in dying, was only allowed in 2021 in New Mexico, despite all backward, mentally retarded, religious republican morons. The film titles say “In memory of Harry Dean Stanton” but that could have been added later. Of the film's 112 minutes, Stanton, as Alvin's brother Lyle, appeared only 2 minutes. But it was not Stanton's last film. That was Lucky from 2017, the same year when he died at 91. The film was shot in 2016, and was released in 2017 in the USA, two weeks after Stanton's death.
The film Youth's original title is La Giovinezza, by Paolo Sorrentino. I like the music by composer David Lang, especially Simple Song #3, with soprano Sumi Jo and violin player Viktoria Mullova. Also Just (After Song of Songs), by ao the Norwegian Trio Mediæval, which has an Old Testament background. Hilarious is the extremely overweight Diego Maradona (by Roly Serrano). Funny is also one scene with Miss Universe: Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel stand in a sort of swimming pool. Their chit-chat abruptly stops when the breath-takingly beautiful Miss Universe (by Mādālina Ghenea), completely naked, enters the scene and the pool. They almost drool when seeing her magnificent breasts. One asks what is that? and the other responds with God!
Simple Song #3 reminds me of the film Maestro in which Lennie Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and a choir rehearse Candide's Make our garden grow. To me it is the same sense of melancholy, but “Make” also resembles, melodically, a lot the grand Finale of Mahler's second symphony Resurrection. I do not know whether Bernstein was using motives from the second's Finale, consciously or not, in composing “Make,” but he surely knew the Finale by heart!
Another road movie is the 2023 British The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Hettie Macdonald, with Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton. Fry, in Kingsbridge, learned that his former colleague Queenie Hennessy, in Berwick-upon-Tweed, has cancer and he wants to save her. So he decides to visit her. Instead of traveling with a lawn mower or small tractor (Straight), Fry walks the 500 miles. Underway he has memories of his unhappy son who committed suicide and feels guilty that he did not manage to save him.
I really like road movies. Kings of the road, The Straight story, The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Nebraska. The latter with Bruce Dern as Woody, with signs of dementia. Woody received a letter saying he won one million dollars but needs to collect it in Lincoln, Nebraska. So he wants to go from Billings, Montana, to Lincoln. His son says the letter is a hoax, but Woody is convinced he will be rich. Underway Woody and his son David (Will Forte) meet their family in Hawthorne in Madison County, Nebraska. His family members smell money...
Harvey Keitel I also saw in Reservoir dogs, Pulp fiction, The painted bird, The grand Budapest hotel, Inglourious Basterds, in the cult trilogy, when smoking was still cool, Smoke, Blue in the face with Lou Reed, Jim Jarmusch and Madonna, and Holy smoke with Kate Winslet, and in From dusk till dawn with Tarantino, Clooney and of course Salma Hayek, with stunning scenes in the strip club called Titty Twister. Also in Thelma and Louise, Taxi driver, and, from 1974 (Yes, I am old) Alice doesn't live here anymore.
Madonna's role in Blue in the face was marginal. She was appreciated much better in Susan Seidelman's 1985 screwball comedy Desperately seeking Susan with the other actors Rosanna Arquette, Aldan Quinn and Robert Joy. This film also provided early career roles for John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurie Metcalf and Steven Wright. If you like Madonna's music and the 80ies New York scene...
A relatively recent film, from 2022, I saw on German TV, Meine Stunden mit Leo, original title Good luck to you, Leo Grande with Dame Emma Thompson, in one scene naked, at 63 years old. Chapeau! I saw her earlier in A walk in the woods, as professor Sybill Trelawney in Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix, Harry Potter and the deadly hallows - part 2 and Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban, and as Lady Marchmain in Brideshead revisited, the film from 2008 along with Michael (Dumbledore) Gambon, not the original Granada TV series of 1981 with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. I still see Castle Howard and Sebastian's teddy bear Aloysius, whose real-life name was Delicatessen. The bear was owned by bear collector and actor Peter Bull, who I only know from John Huston's The African Queen (Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn) and Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (ao Peter Sellers).
Apart from The straight story I saw Harry Dean Stanton in The untouchables, Cool hand Luke, Alien, Wild at heart, The green mile and in a cameo in Two and a half men with Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer, Angus T. Jones (as Jake) and the late Conchata Ferrell (as Berta).
I don't watch TV series, my parents watched ca 1975 the three D's: Dallas, Dynasty and Diamonds. What a nonsense. There are only two exceptions. One German Satellite channel shows each afternoon of working days four episodes of MASH (mobile army surgical hospital) with ao Hawkeye (Allan Alda), Radar (Gary Burghoff), Hotlips (Loretta Swit) and Klinger (Jamie Farr). But I only watch when I'm at home with bad weather. The other exception is 2 1/2 men, another German channel, and only on wednesday evening. German channels started showing again Bond films, all old ones (I like Goldfinger with Gert Fröbe, Sean Connery, and of course Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore (sic). Blackman also played with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in Dmytryk's western Shalako, not the best western. But I like best the Bond films with Daniel Craig: Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre and No Time to Die.
Recently I re-saw the Danish 2020 film Riders of justice with ao Mads Mikkelsen, about a metro accident and a group of statistical probabilities junkies. But he will be remembered as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale from 2006.
Guilty pleasures, one good guy against many bad guys: Wasabi (2001) with Jean Reno, Ryōko Hirosue and Michel Muller (as “Momo”), The Equalizer I, II and III (2014, 2018, 2023) with Denzel Washington, Nobody (2021) with Bob Odenkirk (dad comes home after a fight, son says: you look horrible, dad responds: you should see the others), and The punisher (2004) with Thomas Jane and Travolta (as crime boss). I think there are three films based on the Marvel Comics. The last I mention is the “recent” (2024) action thriller The Beekeeper with ao Jason Statham.
This genre is not new. The books Death Wish (1972) and Death Sentence (1975) were filmed in 1974, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1994, starring first Charles Bronson and then Bruce Willis in a 2018 remake. Wiki: while the first film received mixed reviews, the subsequent sequels and the remake were panned by critics. Am slang “panned” means thumbs down.
Larkin, C. - ed (1992) The Guinness encyclopedia of popular music. Guinness Publishing.
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