Covid…eo Magic: Some of the Best Quarantine Movie Viewing to Consider
$315. That’s how much my film school cost. 3 months of internet connection, and 3 months of streaming services with great viewing options like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and the Criterion Channel. A LOT cheaper than the $13,000 for a semester at a university.
Like everyone else, robbed of the chance to craft my own stories, I decided to dive head first into the stories of the past. I just watched my 100th classic movie. And what an amazing selection of stories the film world has given us! From all countries, genres, and movie eras. I hope you get the chance to watch some of these stories, you’ll feel richer, and more fulfilled, having gained some perspective you previously didn’t have, or simply just be entertained as hell!
Should this virus keep you from creating and crafting your own amazing stories like it has me, below are 15 GREAT ones you should consider checking out. These are the best of the best. 15 amazing tales that will mess with your head, forever change your perspective, or make you laugh, and laugh hard!
The first of a few thrillers takes us to the seedy parts of New York City Nights. Using sterling cinematography and a propulsive jazz score, Alexander Mackendrick’s movie takes us into the process of TMZ-predecessor tabloid journalism, and all the intersting, potentially dangerous, and morally ambiguous characters making up NYC’s hustle and bustle in the wee hours of the morning.
We’re off of thrillers and on an adventure in the Middle East! See if you all can recognize the plot of this 1940 adventure tale: a poor man and his trusty companion try to save a princess and a sultan from a nefarious royal advisor. Much of the inspiration of Disney’s Aladdin comes from this delight of a film, with all sorts of special effects that are pretty amazing, and a movie so rich in color that your eyes pop with every new amazing set or location.
A French freedom fighter is put into a German POW prison, supposedly impenetrable. Fontaine, our freedom fighter, has to fight personal despair, lack of materials, and potential betrayal to find a way to escape, and bring hope and life to his fellow inmates and himself. Robert Bresson gets you lost in the details of Fontaine’s mission, culminating in the breathless last 30 minutes, each more tense than the last.
Back to France for the bridge between Charlie Chaplin and Wes Anderson: Jacques Tati. Films about the general amusement of everyday life are nearly impossible to pull off. Tati does so here with aplomb, putting his Mr. Hulot persona, a man of the past, trying to deal with his relatives in a house of the future. It’s social commentary with a wink, and a laugh, and a smile. A delight end to end.
Alfred Hitchcock has been the big winner of this movie history binging, producing hit after hit after hit. Consider this film, because most others overlook it today. The master of suspense is also quite the droll writer, finding the right amount of humor, thrills, and scares in this political thriller. Plus he’s got at least 3 or 4 amazing set pieces that will have you flummoxed as to how he pulled them off.
Big city Sydney Poitier finds himself investigating a murder in Rod Steiger’s small southern town. Norman Jewison’s movie pulls off an amazing feat: it’s simultaneously a murder mystery, a study of racism, and a buddy cop movie all at the same time. Jewison’s control of the tone, and Steiger and Poiter’s spectacular performances make this a film that stands the test of time, entertain and teaching in perfect harmony.
Shot in Italy right after World War II, Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece sits proudly atop the Italian neorealist movie movement. This movie presents life in an occupied country, giving us a host of fascinating, complex characters to become interested in, and maybe one of the first movies in history to have its 3 most interesting characters be women.
An early, riveting look at guerrilla warfare, from an occupied territory. This movie is about France’s occupation of Algeria in the 1950s, and the African country’s residents uprising. The tactics to fight are eerily prescient, and the story is shot almost like a news report, giving the audience a “you are there” feeling during all this unease and rebellion.
Most people probably know Marlon Brando as Don Corleone from the Godfather. But he’s given a career of amazing performances, and Elia Kazan’s masterpiece might be his best. Brando plays a low level mob enforcer, who slowly realizes the people he’s helping aren’t worth that quick buck he’s earning, because they’re hurting the people he cares about. It’s brash, it’s complex, it’s classic Brando.
One of the great American tales about the working class. Henry Fonda is excellent playing the perpetually righteously angry Tom Joad, one of the leaders of a family migrating west to search for work during the Great Depression. Themes of faceless corporate enemies, justifying horrible behavior by following orders, and the power of unions protecting the helpless are as universal today as they were then, and John Ford’s directions is the right combination of grand and imposing. Plus those John Steinbeck speeches are poetically hopeful and despondent, and will bring a tear to your eye.
The action war flick is one of my favorite genres to explore, and this is the best one. Steve McQueen leads an impressive, intimidating cast of great actors, as a group of POW malcontents are trapped in a well constructed German prison, forcing the men to get creative to try to escape. The last hour of John Sturges’s epic is exciting as hell, and shot magnificently; easy to do, when a motorcycle is riding across the Alps.
Stanley Kubrick directed a lot of films people know well (The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, for example). Paths of Glory is on that short list, and even more impressively, on the short list of greatest war films. Kirk Douglas stars as a Colonel stuck in an awful position: carrying out a folly of an order, and defending a group of “cowards” who refused the order, knowing it to be impossible. Kubrick’s tale is thrilling with action, but also a fascinating tale equally empathetic and chilling, showing the consequences of power and ambition.
The only film I watched previously (when I was a tweener). I remember thinking it was silly, and moving on. Watching it again, it’s so much more than that angsty drivel I was spouting. From the opening credits back and forth, the pythons lampoon of adventure quests brilliantly skewers historical figures, turns into silly farce, and builds into a brilliant conclusion of manic nonsense. Silly, scathing, and stupendous.
Texas is the setting for Peter Bogdanovich’s amazing look at life in small town America. The amazing director creates a place where everyone knows each other, but also knows what’s going on with one another. Secrets, hopes, dreams, remain quiet and subdued. You have 3 options: you can get out, get comfortable in your place, or slowly wither away, lamenting what you’ve lost. It’s emotionally rich and beautifully shot, with amazing performances from Cybill Shepherd, Timothy Bottoms, Ellen Burstyn, and Cloris Leachman.
This movie came out in 1930! And it not only holds up still today, it’s on the short list of the greatest war movies ever made. This WWI tale follows a group of German boys during the middle of the fight. Roused to enlist, they wind up in the trenches, and encounter the horrors and awful realities of what war really means. It’s honest, darkly funny, and always exceptional, and will leave you exhausted emotionally and completely satisfied intellectually, like only the great films could pull off.
