Yes, Filmstruck is dead. However, like a Phoenix, from its ashes was born the Criterion Channel, which also is Netflix for cinephiles, and people eager to see classic cinema from the past.
Below is a rundown of some classic films I have seen and a little synopsis of why they’re good or great.
MODERN WOMEN TRAPPED IN THE WRONG TIME
| 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007) |
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| What is it about?: A friend of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy helps try to obtain an abortion during a time and place where abortion is illegal. |
| What makes the movie special?: This is a good reminder to everyone how painful an abortion is to everyone who knows about it, and more importantly, how abortion affects working class people. There’s a scene at a dinner table that focuses on these clearly privileged people talking about how kids today have it so easy, but the camera stays fixed upon Anamaria Marinca‘s face (she’s spectacular in this film) absorbing this information without getting angry to not play her hand. Writer/Director Cristian Mungiu uses still cameras to put you in these moments with these poor women as they slowly understand the consequences of their actions and the pit of despair they’ve found themselves in. |
| Little Women (1994) |
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| What is it about?: 4 young girls and their basically single mother navigate coming of age and adulthood. |
| What makes the movie special?: Louisa May Alcott’s book has shades of Jane Austen, being about women trying to break the patriarchy and forge their own paths, but in a society of manners. The progressive storytelling helps give the story a timeless feel for sure. However, I was impressed by the character tapestry writer Robin Swicord puts onscreen. All the women’s choices aren’t put in competition with one another, but they are seen as equally rewarding because they chose their lives. Even Claire Danes’s Beth, ridden with scarlet fever, gets to play music and wish to have her stories told by older sister Jo, which made Winona Ryder a super duper star. For such a pro-women story, we also get several woke men as well, including an early Christian Bale as a love interest for several sisters. |
PEDRO ALMODOVAR: THE WHIMSICAL WEIRDO
For those who don’t know what Pedro Almodovar’s films are like, it’s as if the lurid sexuality of Korean filmmaking was crossed with Wes Anderson. Below are two of his best:
| All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre, 1999) |
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| What is it about?: After a personal tragedy, a woman returns to her old hometown to reconnect with her estranged husband, where a new life happens along the way. |
| What makes the movie special?: In watching a few of his films, it’s clear that Pedro Almodovar is an optimist under all circumstances, and that he might possess a little ADD. This movie opens with a pretty brutal tragedy for Cecilia Roth’s protagonist. And by the hour mark, instead of being depressed, she’s helping like 5 other women on the sexual spectrum deal with their own issues. A gay man himself, Almodovar’s stance toward sexual fluidity will make his films nice little time capsules and early showcases for non heterosexual characters, like the spectacular Antonia San Juan’s Agrado, who captivates in every scene she is in. Discipline of a movie’s tone usually makes or breaks an Almodovar movie, and All About My Mother is one his better handled ones, shifting smoothly scene to scene. Also, Almodovar’s gangly plot threads don’t really overwhelm the main storyline, which tends to happen in lesser Almodovar films. |
| Volver (2006) |
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| What is it about?: In order to protect her daughter, a mother takes on her dark secret as her own….while opening a new restaurant and cleaning off her own mother’s grave. |
| What makes the movie special?: Almodovar movies have a knack of merging 2 tonally disparate tales. In the first 15 minutes, we’re subjected with a truly sinister situation leading to a murder. In addition, we get a story of a “spirit” who starts “haunting” their daughter with things like farts. When Spain gives you wind, you make wind power I guess! Penelope Cruz has been in a few Almodovar movies, but she takes center stage in this one, handling all the wild scene to scene changes like the pro that she is, selling the jokes in one scene, and pure emotional catharsis in another, with her complete understanding of who Raimunda is. The plot tendrils are a little too long in Volver compared to All About My Mother, but you’ll never ever be bored. Oh, and for a gay guy, Almodovar sure like’s really boob centric shots for those interested. |
AKIRA KUROSAWA TAKES ON THE BARD
My love for the legendary Japanese filmmaker grows and grows with each new movie I see from him. At this point I know Kurosawa inspires other famous filmmakers to make legendary films. In this 2 movie set, we see Kurosawa draw inspiration from another legendary storyteller: William Shakespeare.
| Ran (1985) |
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| What is it about?: King Lear set in medieval Japan. About a king who tries to give his kingdom to his kids only to be undone by his own hubris and emotion. |
| What makes the movie special?: This was Kurosawa’s last great war epic before his death, and at the time, was the biggest budgeted movie in Japanese history. All of his love of story and cinema is onscreen, with majestic tracking shots and cinematography, battle sequences featuring probably thousands of extras laying seige on castle towers and laying traps on hills. Lord Hidetora Ichimonji aka King Lear doesn’t just have the only really interesting arc: all 3 of his sons, his 2 rivals, one of his son’s wives, and a child of a rival, all get satisfying arcs in the almost 3 hour film. |
| Throne of Blood (1957) |
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| What is it about?:Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It’s about Taketoki Washizu, a feudal Japanese general who’s ambition leads him to become a king…and be undone by that same ambition. |
| What makes the movie special?: I am one of those people who argue that Macbeth is Shakepeare’s best play. It’s riveting, beginning to end, and has a little bit of everything that should satisfy everyone in its 5 acts. Rarely does someone come along and equal a Shakespeare play, let alone surpass it. But Kurosawa might have done so here, making improvements to the ending of the play while getting the good stuff right. The magical creature is sinister enough of a prophet, cloaked in all white and shapeshifting into and out of frame. Isuzu Yamada is Toshiro Mifune’s equal as Lady Macbeth basically, pushing her husband to lust for the crown and regretting her role in the story later. But Best of all, Shakespeare’s play about hubris ends with a rival beating Macbeth in combat. In Kurosawa’s version, Washizu’s lies and lust for power become so great he’s murdered by his own troops, a way better ending for a story about hubris. |