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I Found It At The Movies
I Found It At the Movies: 1997—Fireworks (Takeshi Kitano)
I don't know if it's the Virgo in me, but I always prefer simple to complicated. Particularly as our world seems to be getting more and more complex, I want art to strip that complexity away to give us a view of something pure, clean and fairly uncluttered. I want art to be a respite from my daily life. Many of my favorite moviemakers (Bresson, Jarmusch, Rohmer, Dreyer and early Wenders, to name but a few) make films that fall into this category. They are simplifiers, always looking to distill their work to its most basic essence. "What else can I take away?" must be one of the most important questions in their approach. Another moviemaker I'd put into this category is Takeshi Kitano. Like those mentioned above, Kitano keeps things spare and minimal.
February 8th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1996—Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Roger Deakins began his collaboration with the Coen brothers with their 1991 film Barton Fink. Since then, the two directors and the cameraman have proven that they have one of the most vital, important and powerfully artistic relationships in film. All of their collaborations have visual interest, but Fargo remains my favorite of their aesthetic accomplishments. I'm a sucker, as I've mentioned a couple of times now, for snow-covered imagery, and this is a film about as white as any ever made. It's a gorgeously controlled work in terms of its color palette, camerawork and production design. Everything is deliberate and feels unusually cohesive.
February 1st, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1995—Heat (Michael Mann)
Ask me to choose my favorite post-‘70s crime film, and this is it. Not only is Heat Mann's greatest accomplishment, I also think it's our greatest post-Godfather crime epic. Mann stays true to some of the greatest aspects of classic noir film while still giving the film a modern edge; in doing so, he manages to uphold the noir tradition while moving it forward at the same time. For me, when it comes to updating noir, Heat is the perfect paradigm for a new direction. I simply think it's masterful.
January 25th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1994—Les roseaux sauvages (André Téchiné)
Fans of Renoir's A Day in the Country take notice! Along with that famous film, this is one of French cinema's most poetic and lyrical pastoral works. Not only is it visually stunning, Les roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds) is also emotionally devastating. In fact, it captures the complexity of adolescence as well as anything I've ever seen. It's intense, penetrating, nakedly honest and gets at the vulnerability of mid-teens in a remarkably truthful way. This is one of those films where everything seems to have aligned perfectly: The director's sensibility with the material, the casting, the choice of locations—it's simply a staggering accomplishment from Téchiné.
January 18th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1993—Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma)
Cinematic from the very get-go. What an opening this movie has: Black and white, slow motion, voiceover and that mournful music, all beginning with an extraordinarily well-choreographed long take that is at once abstract, complex and sensuous. And that's just the moviemaking. At the root of this, one of my favorite crime films of all time, is a theme that affects me deeply: The idea that one mistake may trap you forever. If Carlito had just left Benny Blanco alone, stayed out of his way, everything would have been okay. But he made one blunder, and he could never quite escape it.
January 11th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1992—Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
When I think about Unforgiven, I simply think of an extremely well-made film. Everything is top shelf: The acting, the writing and the directing. I know there is a critique of violence and a certain moral position taken in the movie, but that doesn't really connect with me all that much. What really gets me here is the theme of friendship and the incredibly moving bond between the characters played by Eastwood and Morgan Freeman. Eastwood is so adult, so patient, so restrained, that he stands out by not standing out. He's carrying on a certain tradition of classical moviemaking, and the further we get away from it, the more of a wonder it is that a non-postmodern work like this was able to gain so much attention.
January 4th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1991—My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant)
God, I miss Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Brad Renfro and especially River Phoenix. All were young actors with an incredible amount of talent who American cinema will never quite replace. Phoenix had an elemental presence on screen. He was wise, full of life and had a weight of vulnerability about him that I hadn't seen since Clift or Dean. I always enjoyed his work, never more than in this early Van Sant film. I think I'm on the somewhat unpopular side when it comes to Van Sant. Although I greatly admire his later, more experimental work (Elephant, Gerry, etc.), I definitely prefer some of his other films. I guess I like it when he takes himself a little less seriously, like he does here.
December 28th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1990—Trust (Hal Hartley)
I'll never forget reading the liner notes for Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers album and seeing their music described as "angular." At the time, it seemed a strange word to use, and yet the more I thought about it, the more it seemed apt for their music—and, for that matter, apt for a few other things I've experienced, as well. In fact, it's the best word I can think of to describe Hal Hartley's work. Trust—and some of the other Hartley movies from this period—possesses some of the most unique rhythms and cadences in the history of film. It's almost as if it invented a whole new time signature. The movie doesn't cut when it seems normal to cut. The camera doesn't move when it seems like it should. Everything seems to be just a little bit off. But, at the same time, it all coheres into something that is clearly conceived and purposeful.
December 21st, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1989—Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Lee’s an interesting director. So much energy and pretty damn prolific. I can’t say I love every one of his films, but there’s a passion that comes through in his work that’s pretty infectious. He’s versatile, a major risk taker and someone who can do comedy just as well as drama. And when it comes to blending genres, he’s about as fearless as they come. Do the Right Thing is one of my favorite of all his films. The way it juxtaposes comedy and drama is as powerful as it is unsettling. In other words, the drama hits hard, and the comedy is laugh out loud funny.
December 14th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1988—Bird (Clint Eastwood)
Clint Eastwood—as a director, not an actor—appears on this list three times. And even though I can't say that any of his movies are desert island films for me, I do greatly admire both his formal and business approach. Formally, his work recalls some of my favorite early Hollywood films: They are well-told by a director who makes material, not style, his focus. As for business, he's among the few directors with a system of delivering nearly a film a year. I can't say too much about Bird, as I haven't seen it in many years. But I do remember feeling that it gave me a great sense of what it meant to be a jazz musician in the forties and fifties. It features remarkable performances from Forest Whitaker and Diane Venora and displays an extraordinary patience in the way that it allows its story to unfold.
December 7th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1987—Where is the Friend's Home? (Abbas Kiarostami)
I'll never forget the first time I saw one of Abbas Kiarostami's films. I was living in Caen, France, and Through the Olive Trees was playing at the local arthouse. I use the term “local” loosely, as I didn't have a car that year and sometimes the buses would go on strike, taking away my option of public transportation, too. But I was determined to see the film, so I decided to walk. It was least an hour each way, and I can remember questioning my decision a number of times while in transit. After seeing the final shot of the film, though, I left the theater and began my walk back home in absolute movie nirvana. Kiarostami is up there in a small group of my favorite moviemakers. More than anything, what I love about his work is the way he combines cinematic rigor with deep humanity. His style is simple, disciplined, restrained and—to throw in a culinary descriptive—clean. Meanwhile, the emotional core of his work is deep, honest, probing and insightful.
November 30th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1986—Hoosiers (David Anspaugh)
Hoosiers is my most uncharacteristic choice in this entire countdown and probably the least impressive artistically. But when it comes to sports movies (and sports were pretty much my life for the first eighteen years), this is the one that moves me the most. I don't want to psychoanalyze myself here, but when Jimmy Chitwood says, "There's one other thing: I play, coach stays. He goes, I go," it brings me to tears every time. It's one of film's greatest moments of someone standing up for the underdog, the unconventional, the person who has dared to go against the grain. I've always been physically slight, and as an independent moviemaker, you certainly spend a good deal of time as the underdog. We're all trying to beat the machine on some level, and this is one of those movies that always restores my faith a bit.
November 23rd, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1985—Year of the Dragon (Michael Cimino)
If being a great director means making people feel good about themselves or providing a sort of fantasy American dream, then Cimino is not very good at all. But if being a great director means using a camera to tell a story and using the frame in as dynamic a way as possible, then Cimino is a master. It's been years since I've seen this film, but off the top of my head I can already recall three scenes that are masterfully directed: A nightclub shootout, the moment following a home invasion and the final set piece. When I say masterful direction, I mean perfect shot selection, purposeful and expressive camera movement and specific editing—all done in a way where the viewer always understands the geography of the scene.
November 16th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1984—Boy Meets Girl (Leos Carax)
The two toughest years for me to choose in this countdown were 1984 and 1986. I simply have too many films from each year that I absolutely love. And, although I can't argue that this Carax film is better than the entries from Rohmer, Leone, Wenders or Jarmusch, it's the film that's had the most profound effect on me. Carax was only 23 when he made Boy Meets Girl, and it shows. It's the kind of film that makes us realize how seldom cinema gives us the opportunity to experience the world of this young a man. It's simply so difficult to make films that it usually takes someone a good bit older to get a feature on screen. Already, with the proliferation of digital tools, we're seeing this change a little. Carax's youthful vulnerability makes us want to see more of it.
November 9th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1983—L'argent (Robert Bresson)
If you're a Bob Dylan fan (count me among the many) whose introduction to Dylan came by way of his solo work, there is something almost shocking the first time you hear Dylan accompanied by a band. It’s the same with Bresson and his work in color. By the time I saw L’argent, the director’s last film, I had probably seen six or seven of his others, all in black and white. When Bresson does a film in color, its formal elements take on a different effect, something slightly more psychedelic than austere. However, the emotional impact and transcendental qualities are still very much intact. In fact, my experience in watching L’argent, along with Pickpocket, are the most powerful of any I have had with Bresson's work. As always with the French master, the work sneaks up on you, gets under your skin and leaves you in a different place than any other film.
November 2nd, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1982—The Thing (John Carpenter)
Let me start by admitting that I really don't know this or next year's film all that well. I've only seen each of them once, and it's been many years since then, but I'll do my best to recollect. I grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, where it would only snow and stick about once every five years, so snow was always a major event and a magical time. I've decided that this has spilled over into my film-watching, since I now have a real affinity for films with snow. Fargo, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nightfall and On Dangerous Ground all rank among my favorites. Of course, all contain some scenes with snow. I don't want to undersell The Thing as being a film that I like simply because it has snow. It also features one of my favorite Kurt Russell performances, a contained dread similar to what Ridley Scott provided in the first Alien and one of the most sustained and beautiful cold color palettes of any movie I've ever seen.
October 26th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1981—Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
I absolutely love the work of Brian De Palma, and Blow Out is my favorite of all his films. I've said numerous times during this countdown that I consider myself a formalist. As I watch a film, the first thing I do is deconstruct it and judge the way it's formed. This is definitely something that comes from all the time I spent in France; it's the way Henri Langlois, co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française, encouraged the Young Turks to think about film, and it's still the way that most French film critics approach the medium. When it comes to being a pure master of the cinematic form—moving the camera, using music and sound, editing to maximum effect—I consider De Palma, along with Scorsese, to be the greatest of all American directors still working today. There's a sensuality and complexity to De Palma's approach to film, and this is as clear as ever in Blow Out. Just watch the first five minutes.
October 19th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1980—Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme)
Heart. One of my cinephile buddies in Los Angeles often uses this word when he likes a film. He'll say: "I really liked it. It had a lot of heart." When we first started going to movies together, I really wasn't sure what to make of this. Heart? I'm a damn formalist; who cares about heart? But, slowly, I've come around. I think part of it is that I've started to realize how few humanists actually work in the medium. In the past, we had Renoir, De Sica, (arguably) Rossellini and (arguably) John Ford. Now we have Kiarostami, Kiarostami and... Kiarostami. That’s an exaggeration, but there honestly aren't many. Yet I would have to put Jonathan Demme in the small group of humanists that do exist. Although I also really love Something Wild, I would have to say that Melvin and Howard is Demme's most humanist film.
October 12th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1979—Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
Count me among the group that is in absolute awe of Coppola in the seventies. Four films, four masterpieces—a run that has maybe never been matched in American cinema. Best analogy I can make: Michael Jordan scoring over fifty points in four straight games. Apocalypse Now is a film that makes as great an argument as any for the preservation of the theater experience. You watch it at home, and it feels like it's about to overwhelm the television. It's that grand. Walter Murch did the sound design for this movie, which may very well have the most expressive, effective sound of any movie ever made. A bold statement, but Murch's work here is that mind-blowing. And, like a cinematic game of chicken, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro was at the same level as Murch. The visuals here are staggering: Hallucinatory, brain-poppingly colorful and heavy in grandeur and effect.
October 5th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1978—Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard)
Straight Time is one of these small-scale crime movies from the seventies that I absolutely love. It has great production value (including incredible cinematography by The French Connection's Owen Roizman), a great cast (Dustin Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton, M. Emmet Walsh and Gary Busey) and a grit and grime that recalls some of the early great B noir films. It also boasts one of the greatest heist scenes ever put on film. In fact, I rank it right up there with the famous ones from Rififi and Heat. It's cliché, but I'll go ahead and say it: They don't make movies like this anymore.
September 28th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1977—Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
I really don't know this film that well. In fact, I think I've only seen it once. As is probably clear by now, I usually privilege dramas over comedies. They affect me the most, plus they're what I'm interested in making. All this to say, please excuse me for writing a less detailed piece for this year. What I can say about Annie Hall is that it features one of Allen's sharpest scripts and some of his most memorable characters. There's a certain breeziness to its depth that keeps it running forward at a great clip. Woody Allen deserves more credit for his formal experimentation; his reputation is mostly as a simple comedy director, but his movies always feature a certain narrative complexity and bold formal elements.
September 21st, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1976—Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders)
Why cinematographer Robby Müller isn't more of a household name is beyond me. He's responsible for five or six of the most beautiful films ever made. Dead Man, Alice in the Cities, Paris, Texas, Down by Law, Breaking the Waves, The American Friend, Kings of the Road... Okay, make that eight or nine! I find that Müller has as great a sensitivity to nature as any cameraman that has ever worked in the medium.
September 14th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1975—Night Moves (Arthur Penn)
For what it's worth, I guess this is one of the most flawed films to top my list. By no means would I tout it as being perfect, and I'm not even sure it's great. But I love it more than any other film I've seen from 1975. I put Night Moves in the same category as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Straight Time; they’re all films that are substantially lower in budget than the Coppola and Polanski crime epics. I only mention budget because there's a grit and casualness to Night Moves that immediately announces its relative lack of ambition. In fact, it's this lack of ambition that accounts for much of its likability. Like a close friend that puts no expectations on you, it's always easy—and a pleasure—to be in its company.
September 7th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1974--Chinatown (Roman Polanski)
I'm not a writer. I probably will never be. But if I were to become one, I would want my movies to sound like Robert Towne's. In the near-decade between Bonnie and Clyde and Shampoo, when he wrote Chinatown, Towne operated in a zone of moviespeak nirvana. Working somewhere between literature and spoken word, his dialogue was sharper than the way we speak, yet close enough to our rhythms and words that they were utterly recognizable.
Don't get me wrong, I think Roman Polanski is an extraordinary moviemaker. But if I'm being honest about why I like Chinatown so much, I have to give just as much credit to Towne. Not only does he manage to create one of the best film noir stories, but he is also somehow able to work in a history of Los Angeles at the same time.
August 31st, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1973--The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
Seeing this has been one of the high points of my life as a cinephile so far. I can't remember the name of the theater where I saw it, but it was right around the corner from the Panthéon, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. In other words, the same exact neighborhood where all the action in the film takes place. The Mother and the Whore is one of these films that makes its own rules when it comes to time. It’s 217 minutes long, and you enter from one world and leave from another. It manipulates its environment that much.
August 24th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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