MC Yearly Consensus - 1971

[Kurosawa Fan]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the voting is closed, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Punishment Park
2. Straw Dogs
3. Bananas
4. Nicholas and Alexandra
5. Play Misty for Me

[Lazlo]

1. Harold and Maude
2. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
5. THX 1138

[Ezee E]

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. Straw Dogs
3. The French Connection
4. Dirty Harry
5. The Last Picture Show

[MacGuffin]

1. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (Sergio Martino)
2. The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage)
3. Requiem for a Vampire (Jean Rollin)
4. Living (Frans Zwartjes)
5. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart)

[Spinal]

1. Walkabout
2. Punishment Park
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. The Cat in the Hat
5. And Now For Something Completely Different

[Raiders]

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman)
2. Wanda (Loden)
3. Punishment Park (Watkins)
4. W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (Makavejev)
5. The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich)

---------------------------------------

6. Walkabout (Roeg)
7. ...And Now for Something Completely Different (McNaughton)
8. The Cat o' Nine Tails (Argento)
9. Beware of a Holy Whore (Fassbinder)
10. The Devils (Russell)

[Torgo]

1. The French Connection
2. Fiddler on the Roof
3. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
4. Mon Oncle Antoine
5. Summer of '42

[Russ]

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. And Now For Something Completely Different
3. Viva la muerte
4. The Devils
5. Fata Morgana

[Boner M]

Gonna try and catch up with this year big time over the next week.

1. Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman)
2. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman)
3. Wanda (Loden)
4. Deep End (Skolimowski)
5. Just Before Nightfall (Chabrol)

6. Punishment Park (Watkins)
7. Walkabout (Roeg)
8. The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich)
9. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (Stuart)
10. Daughters of Darkness (Kumel)

Need to see (and will before this closes, hopefully): Klute, Two English Girls, Bleak Moments

Need to re-see: The Devils

[dreamdead]

1. Walkabout
2. Punishment Park
3. McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Need to see a lot from this year still, but I'd prefer not giving Kubrick a vote for this year.

[Pop Trash]

1. The Last Picture Show
2. Harold and Maude
3. Two-Lane Blacktop
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Dirty Harry

6. The French Connection
7. Murmur of the Heart
8. Johnny Got His Gun
9. Duel
10. Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory

Need to re-see: McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Straw Dogs

Excellent year!

[Grouchy]

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. The Last Picture Show
3. Straw Dogs
4. The Abominable Dr. Phibes
5. Dirty Harry

[baby doll]

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
2. A New Leaf (Elaine May)
3. Beware of a Holy Whore (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
4. Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg)
5. Nostalgia (Hollis Frampton)

Overrated: A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)

A Flat-Out Stinker: Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby)

[Sven]

A Flat-Out Stinker: Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby)

Explain.

[baby doll]

Explain.I found both characters utterly unconvincing. Harold isn't just morbid but he stages elaborate fake suicides to torment his mother, who I guess we're supposed to feel deserves it because she's rich and white and female. Maude isn't just a new agey flower granny, but her lust for life is strong enough to survive the horrors of the Holocaust. Also, it's not funny.

[Sven]

I found both characters utterly unconvincing. Harold isn't just morbid but he stages elaborate fake suicides to torment his mother, who I guess we're supposed to feel deserves it because she's rich and white and female.

I feel this is an overly polemic reading. It is made clear in the film that his impetus is not torment, but rather mourning. He is searching for acceptance through loss. He wants people to miss him, because that's when he's felt the most love. And I think it's more that his mother is apathetic that we feel Harold is justified in that torment. The affluence comments on that icy distance, the race issue is nearly irrelevant because there's no other races to play off in the picture, and I don't think Ashby is traumatizing women specifically. Surely he lampoons the 70s feminine/feminist ideals to an extent, but he also tackles the military industrial complex and drug culture, to name a few other era-specific subjects.


Maude isn't just a new agey flower granny, but her lust for life is strong enough to survive the horrors of the Holocaust. Also, it's not funny.

You don't think that perhaps her "lust for life" is a product of her survival?

[Teh Sausage]

01. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
02. The French Connection
03. A Clockwork Orange
04. Duel
05. Play Misty for Me

HMs: And Now For Something Completely Different, Dirty Harry, Straw Dogs

Don't like: THX 1138, Bay of Blood, Macbeth

Haven't seen: Walkabout, Punishment Park, The Last Picture Show

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. Love (Karoly Makk)
2. McCabe and Mrs Miller
3. Straw Dogs
4. Wanda
5. Fata Morgana

[Robby P]

1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. Duel
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. Bananas
5. The French Connection

[baby doll]

I feel this is an overly polemic reading. It is made clear in the film that his impetus is not torment, but rather mourning. He is searching for acceptance through loss. He wants people to miss him, because that's when he's felt the most love. And I think it's more that his mother is apathetic that we feel Harold is justified in that torment. The affluence comments on that icy distance, the race issue is nearly irrelevant because there's no other races to play off in the picture, and I don't think Ashby is traumatizing women specifically. Surely he lampoons the 70s feminine/feminist ideals to an extent, but he also tackles the military industrial complex and drug culture, to name a few other era-specific subjects.Other than a big "boo hoo, Richie Rich just wants to be accepted," my immediate reaction is that there had to be a less heavy handed way to portray this character.


You don't think that perhaps her "lust for life" is a product of her survival?Structurally, that's how it functions as a late-in-the-game revelation that's supposed to explain everything about this character and can because she's so broadly defined. I found it offensive and reductive in equal measures.

[Sven]

Other than a big "boo hoo, Richie Rich just wants to be accepted," my immediate reaction is that there had to be a less heavy handed way to portray this character.

I think you are blind to the character's (and the character's function's) nuances. I don't think he's heavy-handed at all. I've seen the film, oh, I don't know, maybe ten times, and each time I get a completely different reading of Harold. Surely his role works on a perfunctory level that you see it on, but there's much much more.


Structurally, that's how it functions as a late-in-the-game revelation that's supposed to explain everything about this character and can because she's so broadly defined. I found it offensive and reductive in equal measures.

So are you saying that structurally, the movie suggests that the Holocaust transformed her or are you saying that her joie de vivre helped her through the Holocaust?

And I do not entirely disagree with your response: Maude kind of annoys me, particularly in her broad definition. In this way, I see your point about Harold insofar as he acts as a broad foil to her broadness. But again, here I think that you are falling into a classic baby doll trap, which is that you're letting your presumptions overpower a more nuanced engagement. Not saying you're wrong. Just saying that there's a noticeable jerking of knees here.

[Derek]

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
2. Punishment Park (Peter Watkins)
3. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
4. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev)
5. Trafic (Jacques Tati)
****************************** *
6. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart)
7. Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman)
8. Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog)
9. Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes)
10. Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg)

HMs: Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby)
Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski)
Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog)
The French Connection (William Friedkin)

[Stay Puft]

1. Fata Morgana
2. The Abominable Dr. Phibes
3. The Tragedy of Macbeth
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. New One-Armed Swordsman

[Yxklyx]

1. Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg)
2. The Devils (Ken Russell)
3. The French Connection (William Friedkin)
4. The Andromeda Strain (Robert Wise)
5. Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby)

6. Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
7. Little Murders (Alan Arkin)
8. King Lear (Grigori Kozintsev & Iosif Shapiro)
9. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
10. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)

Awesome year!

[B-side]

Do excuse my lack of experience in this year:

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. Straw Dogs
3. McCabe And Mrs. Miller

Truth be told, I wasn't blown away by my #2 or #3.

[The Mike]

Great, great year (and I still haven't seen McCabe and Mrs. Miller, A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show, and Walkabout):eek:

1. Dirty Harry
2. The French Connection
3. Straw Dogs
4. Vanishing Point
5. Play Misty for Me

HM: The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Diamonds are Forever, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, Godzilla vs. Hedorah

I think that, if someone studied it, they might find that the level of violence in cinema increased by 10000% this year.

[soitgoes...]

1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
2. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
3. Punishment Park (Peter Watkins)
4. Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg)
5. Love (Károly Makk)
------------------------------------
6. Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah)
7. Bay of Blood (Mario Bava)
8. W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavegev)

I am hoping to watch Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets before this is over. Then again I'm absolutely certain it won't matter outside of how many points my top 4 now will receive.

Also, I can't believe we only have about 6 or so of these left. Good job Match-Cut!

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. Two English Girls
2. The Last Picture Show
3. THX 1138
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

[MadMan]

Well this list is okay, I guess. Much more I have to see from this year, I do.

1. The Abominable Dr. Phibes
2. Dirty Harry
3. Big Jake
4. The French Connection
5. Support Your Local Gunfighter
6. The Omega Man
7. The Cat In The Hat

[Philosophe_rouge]

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
2. Duck, you Sucker!
3. Walkabout
4. The Last Picture Show
5. Straw Dogs

[Malickfan]

1. Clockwork Orange
2. Two-Lane Blacktop
3. Minnie & Moskowitz
4. Straw Dogs
5. The French Connection

[Epistemophobia]

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. Minnie and Moskowitz
3. Four Nights of a Dreamer
4. The Third Part of the Night
5. Blanche

--

Il Decameron
I Clowns
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
Lizard in a Woman's Skin
Beware of a Holy Whore
W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism

[thefourthwall]

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
2. Duel
3. Fiddler on the Roof
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Bedknobs and Broomsticks

I hate Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Normally, I'm all for films adapting books in new and different ways, but what it did to the character of Charlie is just plain wrong.

[Derek]

Gene Wilder > Roald Dahl

There, I said it.

[Malickfan]

Gene Wilder > Roald Dahl

There, I said it.

Agreed.

[Winston*]

Gene Wilder never wrote a story where a woman kills her husband with a leg of lamb and then feeds the lamb to the police thereby disposing of the evidence. Point Dahl.

[thefourthwall]

I suppose technically Dahl wrote the screenplay, so I shouldn't quibble too much.

[Derek]

Gene Wilder never wrote a story where a woman kills her husband with a leg of lamb and then feeds the lamb to the police thereby disposing of the evidence. Point Dahl.

Roald Dahl never had to fall in love with a sheep and be funny while doing so. Point Wilder.

[monolith94]

1. Macbeth
2. Fata Morgana
3. Carnal Knowledge
4. Fiddler on the Roof
5. And Now For Something Completely Different

[Winston*]

Roald Dahl never had to fall in love with a sheep and be funny while doing so. Point Wilder.

Gene Wilder is of Jewish descent, whereas Roald Dahl was an anti-Semite. Point Dahl.

Not sure who came up with this scoring card...

[Malickfan]

Speaking of Wilder, his framed picture in the actor's school at the University of Iowa gets stolen every year by students. It's a tradition I guess.

[origami_mustache]

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. Harold and Maude
3. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
4. Bananas
5. Murmur of the Heart

HM: Trafic, Living, and The French Connection

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
2. The French Connection
3. Punishment Park
4. Harold and Maude
5. A Clockwork Orange

[ledfloyd]

1. Carnal Knowledge
2. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
3. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
4. Bananas
5. The French Connection

[monolith94]

Roald Dahl was a spy. Point Dahl.

[Yum-Yum]

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. Harold and Maude
3. W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism
4. Klute
5. Straw Dogs

[Duncan]

1. Fata Morgana
2. A Clockwork Orange
3. Punishment Park
4. Walkabout
5. How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman

Got number 5 in the right year this time.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Is there any way someone can tally this for me? I'll be out of town from tomorrow until Monday, and won't have a stable connection for that time. Otherwise it'll have to wait until Tuesday.

[transmogrifier]

If A Clockwork Orange beats McCabe and Mrs Miller, then no-one needs to tally, because the list is null and void.

[Pop Trash]

If A Clockwork Orange beats McCabe and Mrs Miller, then no-one needs to tally, because the list is null and void.
:rolleyes:

[transmogrifier]

:rolleyes:

I'm sure you had a witty retort all lined up, but had to rush off quickly before completing it. However, it was imperative that you register some form of dissent, lest I walk away in the belief that my thoughts are shared 100% by the rest of humanity.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is the case.

[Grouchy]

I'm sure you had a witty retort all lined up, but had to rush off quickly before completing it. However, it was imperative that you register some form of dissent, lest I walk away in the belief that my thoughts are shared 100% by the rest of humanity.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is the case.
Ya sure write all fancy and complicated for a man has so little of value to say.

*spits on the floor*

[transmogrifier]

Ya sure write all fancy and complicated for a man has so little of value to say.

*spits on the floor*

I'm flattered you take so much interest in my posts to be able to discern particular trends, but I would guess you have more productive ways to spend your time. I'm not sure if telling you that your interest in how or what I post is not reciprocated in anyway whatsoever is going to help matters any, but I'll do it anyway.

Oh, and clean up that spit, this is a communal area.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Anyone? Anyone? Please? Double rep to anyone who can help me out. I'm on vacation and won't be back until Monday.

[Stay Puft]

Anyone? Anyone? Please? Double rep to anyone who can help me out. I'm on vacation and won't be back until Monday.

Well, if nobody else is going to step up, I'll do it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Well, if nobody else is going to step up, I'll do it.

You rule.

[Stay Puft]

I'm tallying and tabulating and triangulating and shit. Hang on to your seats.

[Stay Puft]

So exciting I had to take a break. But now we're about ready to roll.

[Stay Puft]

# 9 (tie)

http://i35.tinypic.com/2v3oj0g.jpg

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Director: Mel Stuart

Country: USA

The world is astounded when Willy Wonka, for years a recluse in his factory, announces that five lucky people will be given a tour of the factory, shown all the secrets of his amazing candy, and one will win a lifetime supply of Wonka chocolate. Nobody wants the prize more than young Charlie, but as his family is so poor that buying even one bar of chocolate is a treat, buying enough bars to find one of the five golden tickets is unlikely in the extreme. But in movieland, magic can happen. Charlie, along with four somewhat odious other children, get the chance of a lifetime and a tour of the factory. Along the way, mild disasters befall each of the odious children, but can Charlie beat the odds and grab the brass ring?

(Who writes these plot summaries? They're terrible.)

The film was originally financed by the Quaker Oats Company. They hoped to tie it to a new candy bar they intended to bring on the market. When the film was released, the company began marketing its "Wonka" chocolate bars. Unfortunately, an error in the chocolate formula caused the bars to melt too easily, even while on the shelf, and so they were taken off the market. Quaker sold the brand to St. Louis based Sunline, Inc. (which later became part of Nestlé via Rowntree) not long after this; Sunline was able to make the brand a success, and Wonka-branded candy (most of which isn't chocolate-based) is still available in the USA.

"Fortunately, things pick up once we get inside Wonka’s domain. The eye-popping production design takes over. The story’s wicked black humor kicks into gear, with the various obnoxious kids getting well-deserved comeuppances, while Wonka’s diminutive helpers, the orange-skinned Oompa-Loompas, reprise a song that states the story’s simple, fairy-tale morality. It’s all wonderfully colorful and imaginative, and filled with a multitude of references and jokes that will be understood only by adults (Wonka quotes everyone from Shakespeare to Coleridge). In the end, WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY may not be a masterpiece on the level of THE WIZARD OF OZ, but it is a delight that deserves its place in the pantheon of family films that truly do appeal to the whole family, not just the young kids." -- Steve Biodrowski

[Boner M]

I managed to watch ten 1971 films in the last few weeks for the purposes of this consensus. I did it all 4 da matchcut, yo.

[Stay Puft]

# 9 (tie)

http://i37.tinypic.com/ek0q45.jpg

Fata Morgana

Director: Werner Herzog

Country: West Germany

Footage shot in and around the Sahara Desert, accompanied only by a spoken creation myth and the songs of Leonard Cohen.

Herzog and his crew went to Cameroon a few weeks after a coup attempt took place to shoot the film. The police arrested the director after misidentifying a crew member as a wanted criminal. He and several crew members were beaten and thrown into a cell. Herzog contracted bilharzia, a blood parasite.

"In its attempt to capture the natural phenomena of illusion, Fata Morgana also creates its own obscurities, compressing time and space into a forbidding, but curiously familiar heterocosm. Post-apocalyptic visions are accompanied by readings (by German film historian Lotte Eisner) from Mayan cosmogonies on the soundtrack. Similarly, the film’s musical cues conflate geography and culture, contrasting classical music (Mozart and Handel), contemporary Western rock (Leonard Cohen and Blind Faith), African hymns, and rudimentary brothel tangos. Even Herzog’s footage of natural wonders and morphing psychedelic landscapes lacks perspective and scale, as though viewed from the window of an airplane or through a microscope." -- Leo Goldsmith

[Stay Puft]

# 8

http://i36.tinypic.com/8wzcc1.jpg

Harold and Maude

Director: Hal Ashby

Country: USA

The self-destructive and needy wealthy teenager Harold is obsessed by death and spends his leisure time attending funerals, watching the demolishing of buildings, visiting junkyards, simulating suicides trying to get attention from his indifferent, snobbish and egocentric mother, and having sessions with his psychologist. When Harold meets the anarchist seventy-nine-year-old Maude at a funeral, they become friends and the old lady discloses other perspectives of the cycle of life for him. Meanwhile, his mother enlists him in a dating service and tries to force Harold to join the army. On the day of Maude's eightieth birthday, Harold proposes to her but he finds the truth about life at the end of hers.

When considering the role of Harold, Bud Cort asked the opinion of director Robert Altman, his mentor. Robert Altman cautioned that rising star Bud Cort might find himself forever typecast.

"And so what we get, finally, is a movie of attitudes. Harold is death, Maude life, and they manage to make the two seem so similar that life's hardly worth the extra bother. The visual style makes everyone look fresh from the Wax Museum, and all the movie lacks is a lot of day-old gardenias and lilies and roses in the lobby, filling the place with a cloying sweet smell. Nothing more to report today. Harold doesn't even make pallbearer. " -- Roger Ebert

[Stay Puft]

# 7

http://i36.tinypic.com/28icmq9.jpg

The Last Picture Show

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Country: USA

In tiny Anarene, Texas, in the lull between World War Two and the Korean Conflict, Sonny and Duane are best friends. Enduring that awkward period of life between boyhood and manhood, the two pass their time the best way they know how -- with the movie house, basketball, and girls. Jacey is Duane's steady, wanted by every boy in school, and she knows it. Her daddy is rich and her mom is good looking and loose. It's the general consensus that whoever wins Jacey's heart will be set for life. But Anarene is dying a quiet death as folks head for the big cities to make their livings and raise their kids. The boys are torn between a future somewhere out there beyond the borders of town or making do with their inheritance of a run-down pool hall and a decrepit movie house -- the legacy of their friend and mentor, Sam the Lion. As high school graduation approaches, they learn some difficult lessons about love, loneliness, and jealousy. Then folks stop attending the second-run features at the movie house and the time comes for the last picture show. With the closure of the movie house, the boys feel that a stage of their lives is closing. They stand uneasily on the threshold of the rest of their lives.

Upon selecting the town of Archer City, Texas, as a filming location, production designer Polly Platt and director Peter Bogdanovich decided that the town should have a bleak, colorless look about it. After considering several options, such as painting all the buildings gray, Platt and Bogdanovich consulted close friend Orson Welles about the viability of shooting the film in black and white. Welles simply said, "Of COURSE you'll shoot it in black and white!"

"Lovers of dramas featuring richly developed characters and impeccably crafted settings will most appreciate what The Last Picture Show has to offer. It's a slow, thoughtful piece with great emotional resonance but not a lot of plot. It's a little sad to consider that this was the director's Citizen Kane - a movie he would forever try without success to equal. The tale of Bogdanovich's life, from the highs of The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon to the low of lover Dorothy Stratton's murder, would make for lurid, tragic cinema. In the future, perhaps all Bogdonavich has to offer are occasional appearances on The Sopranos, but in 1971 he gave us one of the most accomplished views ever of a slice of America that otherwise would have been lost in the mists of time." -- James Berardinelli

[Stay Puft]

# 6

http://i36.tinypic.com/2hpso7p.jpg

Walkabout

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Country: Australia

Two young children are stranded in the Australian outback and are forced to cope on their own. They meet an Aborigine on "walkabout": a ritualistic banishment from his tribe.

The poetry quoted by the narrator at the end of the film is Part 40 of A.E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad": Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.

"When Roeg made ''Walkabout,'' the spiritual superiority of nature -- and the ecological awareness that inspired it -- were still fresh themes on screen and in literature. Today they seem dated and maybe a tad naive in their belief that nature can deliver us from foolishness if we only learn to serve it instead of taming it. Even more dated are Roeg's zooms, freeze frames and non- sequential editing -- techniques that he had used as the cinematographer on Richard Lester's 1968 film ''Petulia.'' They may have looked hip and bold at the time, but today they're a little silly and scream ''late '60s.''" -- Edward Guthmann

[Stay Puft]

I'm tired. Rest in the morning. Goodnight, Match Cut.

[Spinal]

I'm tired. Rest in the morning. Goodnight, Match Cut.

Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.

[Stay Puft]

# 5

http://i35.tinypic.com/154x3ia.jpg

Straw Dogs

Director: Sam Peckinpah

Country: UK | USA

Upon moving to Britain to get away from American violence, astrophysicist David Sumner and his wife Amy are bullied and taken advantage of by the locals hired to do construction. When David finally takes a stand it escalates quickly into a bloody battle as the locals assault his house.

Tom Hedden's family were originally given roles in the film but were either cut or never filmed. June Brown was cast as Hedden's wife, together with Chloe Franks as their daughter Emma, and a scene was scripted featuring both in their home laundry with Susan George. However although the scene was included in the shooting script it was never actually filmed. Michael Mundell was originally cast as Cawsey the rat-catcher but was later switched to the role of Bertie Hedden in a scene featuring the village children. However his entire role was never filmed because the scene was canceled due to time and budget constraints.

"Sam Peckinpah films are rapes of the audience. They're intensely uncomfortable and invasive, intent on tearing down the scrim of society to reveal the ugliness housed in our lizard brains. His movies aren't exploitation, they're sexual evolutionary anthropology, something like the work of the brilliant Dr. Craig Palmer or Dr. Donald Symons. And they suggest that rape is at least as much about sex as it is about power--that women who flaunt their sexuality in unwise situations will sometimes get attacked as a result of it, and that men sometimes need to get rough in order to assert themselves in a world dominated and obsessed with violence. Peckinpah goes so far as to suggest that a denial of this (such as liberalism or feminism) is the worst sort of hypocrisy--it's a suppression of the shadow, which, as any good Jungian worth his/her salt must know, leads to magnification and inappropriate release. It's what caused Pauline Kael to dub Straw Dogs a "fascist classic." (She's right, you know.) In terms of addressing the animal darkness at the heart of every single human being with purposefulness and occasionally awful auteur pretension, Straw Dogs might be the most eloquent, most damnably unpleasant piece of celluloid ever stained. It's a milestone in gender studies--at least it ought to be, not because it preaches the comfortable, but because it insists on stumping the truth of our base nature. Men want to fuck anything that moves, women want to choose; both have to fight men for that right. That verity is a dictatorial master, indeed." -- Walter Chaw

[Stay Puft]

# 4

http://i33.tinypic.com/qzgax3.jpg

Punishment Park

Director: Peter Watkins

Country: USA

"Punishment Park" is a pseudo-documentary purporting to be a film crews's news coverage of the team of soldiers escorting a group of hippies, draft dodgers, and anti-establishment types across the desert in a type of capture the flag game. The soldiers vow not to interfere with the rebels' progress and merely shepherd them along to their destination. At that point, having obtained their goal, they will be released. The film crew's coverage is meant to insure that the military's intentions are honorable. As the representatives of the 60's counter-culture get nearer to passing this arbitrary test, the soldiers become increasingly hostile, attempting to force the hippies out of their pacifist behavior. A lot of this film appears improvised and in several scene real tempers seem to flare as some of the "acting" got overaggressive. This is a interesting exercise in situational ethics. The cinema-veritie style, hand-held camera, and ambiguous demands of the director - would the actors be able to maintain their roles given the hazing they were taking - pushed some to the brink. The cast's emotions are clearly on the surface. Unfortunately this film has gone completely underground and is next to impossible to find. It would offer a captivating document of the distrust that existed between soldiers willfully serving in the military and those persons who opposed the war peacefully.

Whole movie was filmed using Eclair 16 mm camera. Theather cut and the version for released DVD is been blown up to 35 mm film.

"With handcuffed defendants dragged screaming from the room, the tribunal's sessions bear an obvious resemblance to the Chicago Seven trial, and it's not hard to pick out analogues for Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg. But for a film that initially reads like a political tract, Punishment Park proves surprisingly difficult to pin down. Its caricature of bloodthirsty law enforcement outraged contemporary critics, but when the camera swoops in on a soldier who's just shot two unarmed civilians, his hurt and confusion is palpable, recalling the sunken-eyed countenances of Vietnam veterans. And with their blithe talk of bombings and armed revolt, the most militant defendants all but justify their own incarceration, if not the disproportionate punishment awaiting them." -- Sam Adams

[Stay Puft]

# 3

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The French Connection

Director: William Friedkin

Country: USA

William Friedkin's gritty police drama portrays two tough New York City cops trying to intercept a huge heroin shipment coming from France. An interesting contrast is established between 'Popeye' Doyle, a short-tempered alcoholic bigot who is nevertheless a hard-working and dedicated police officer, and his nemesis Alain Charnier, a suave and urbane gentleman who is nevertheless a criminal and one of the largest drug suppliers of pure heroin to North America. During the surveillance and eventual bust, Friedkin provides one of the most gripping and memorable car chase sequences ever filmed.

'Fernando Rey' was cast by mistake; 'William Friedkin' wanted an actor he remembered seeing in Belle de jour (1967), and the casting director thought it was Fernando Rey - who was hired. Only upon arriving at the airport to meet Rey did Friedkin see that it was not the actor he had been thinking of; he also learned that Rey spoke no French. Once at Rey's hotel (the same one he stays at in the film), Friedkin called the casting director, who realized he had confused Rey's name with that of the correct actor, Francisco Rabal. Friedkin considered firing Rey, but changed his mind once it was learned that Rabal wasn't available and didn't speak any English, either.

"The French Connection" hits the sweet spot of urban grit, perhaps by virtue of its early entry in the grimy '70s sweepstakes. This New York is indeed broken-in, featuring a magnificently dilapidated warehouse, but it doesn't wallow, stagger, and vomit like the squalid and bankrupt Gotham of Martin Scorsese's 1976 milestone "Taxi Driver." Nor does Popeye's dispute with a federal agent attached to the case carry grimly satisfying anti-establishment overtones. Perhaps screenwriter Ernest Tidyman split the difference between his work on the glam attitude of "Shaft" (which made its debut the same year) and later in the deep-cover flick "Report to the Commissioner." -- Nicolas Rapold

[Stay Puft]

# 2

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McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Director: Robert Altman

Country: USA

Set in winter in the Old West. Charismatic but dumb John McCabe arrives in a young Pacific Northwest town to set up a whorehouse/tavern. The shrewd Mrs. Miller, a professional madam, arrives soon after construction begins. She offers to use her experience to help McCabe run his business, while sharing in the profits. The whorehouse thrives and McCabe and Mrs. Miller draw closer, despite their conflicting intelligences and philosophies. Soon, however, the mining deposits in the town attract the attention of a major corporation, which wants to buy out McCabe along with the rest. He refuses, and his decision has major repercussions for him, Mrs. Miller, and the town.

During post-production on this film, 'Robert Altman' was having a difficult time finding a proper musical score, until he attended a party where the album "Songs of Leonard Cohen" was playing and noticed that several songs from the album seemed to fit in with the overall mood and themes of the movie. Cohen, who had been a fan of Altman's previous film, Brewster McCloud (1970), allowed him to use three songs from the album - "The Stranger Song", "Sisters of Mercy" and "Winter Lady" - although Altman was dismayed when Cohen later admitted that he didn't like the movie. A year later, Altman received a phone call from Cohen, who told him that he changed his mind after re-watching the movie with an audience and now loved it.

"For me, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is the standard for a sort of emotional purity, a movie whose feeling permeates you without ever once forcing a thing. Emerging from it, I always feel like the town drunk who attempts a jig on the ice in one scene: drugged, unsure of my footing, as if one step would send the whole enterprise crashing to the ground. I try to clutch the images to me even as they seem to evaporate like smoke. Like all things that are beautiful and unalterably sad, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," by its final scene -- the hired guns tracking McCabe through a quiet, persistent blizzard -- achieves a deep sense of peace. Your heart is breaking, but you can't help being struck by the loveliness of the snow that, like Joyce's, settles over all the living and the dead." -- Charles Taylor

[Stay Puft]

# 1

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A Clockwork Orange

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Country: UK

Alex and his three droogs, live in a futuristic Britain void of proper law and civil protection. They do drugs, drink, skip school, and wreak havoc during the night. They beat up an old drunkard, steal cars, rape helpless women, and start gang fights in the streets. Alex, being a rather arrogant leader, is rude and disrespectful towards his other droogs, and because of this they plot behind his back against him. In their plan to rob a woman on the outskirts of town, Alex enters the house alone to unlock the door for the other. When confronted by the owner of the house he strikes her in the head in attempt to knock her out. Meeting his droogs outside he is met with a bottle being smashed over his own head, stunning him long enough for the cops to finally arrive and arrest him. It turns out the woman he struck inevitably ended up dieing from the blow and Alex now finds himself with a 14 year prison sentence. In hopes of severely shortening his sentence, Alex signs up for a new breakthrough treatment that "cures" criminals of their want to do evil. The Ludovico treatment, as it is called, consist of Alex living a very high lifestyle while twice daily being subjected to gory and hateful films full of all that is considered wrong and evil. Part of Alex's diet contains a special drug that causes him to slowly get sick as he is forced to watch these films. After a short period of time he is shown as being cured and when, in front of a small audience, he is subjected to another bullying man and a beautiful woman, he is unable to fight back or do what he would like to do, and instead is utterly paralyzed with sickness. The process stripped him not only of his evil, but more importantly and symbolically stripped him of his right to think and be free and live the life he wishes to. After being released from prison and kicked out of his home he is taken in by small group of people who want to get Alex's pitiful story out to the public to attempt to harm the current regime in time for the next election. During this process, Alex attempts suicide and fails, but because of this the doctors of the original Ludovico treatment set out to cure him. Alex awakes from his coma cured of the sickness and is finally able to think and do what he wishes again.

(You can skip the movie now. Thanks, Walker Parkhill.)

The writer of the novel, 'Anthony Burgess', claimed that the term "clockwork orange" was a Cockney phrase, but most philologists agree that there has never been any such phrase until the appearance of his book. Burgess lived in Malaysia during the 1940s, and the Malay word for man is "orang", from which "orangutan" (man of the jungle) is derived. There is, however, an English slang expression for a gambling device known as the "one-armed bandit" in the U.S.: a clockwork fruit (the gambling device typically is referred to as a "fruit machine" in the UK due to the depictions on its dials; clockwork in England is a word applied to a plethora of mechanical devices beyond just time-pieces). The anthropomorphic look of a "fruit machine" (thus, its name "one-armed bandit" in the U.S. for its roughly man-sized shape and "arm" giving it a humanoid appearance) may well have given rise to the term "clockwork orange" in Burgess' fertile mind as Alex, through conditioning, is turned into a robot (which a fruit machine resembles). Gambling also is a game of chance, and Alex literally is gambling with his soul. This is made explicit, particularly in the film, when Dr. Brodsky tells Alex - who is upset over the use of Beethoven on the soundtrack to the atrocity films and claims he has been enlightened - to take his chance, as he will be free in a fortnight (roughly the time an annual vacation in an English resort such as Blackpool - the Las Vegas of Britain - with its scores of fruit machines, would take).

"I'd prefer not giving Kubrick a vote for this year." -- dreamdead

"Overrated" -- baby doll

"If A Clockwork Orange beats McCabe and Mrs Miller, then no-one needs to tally, because the list is null and void." -- transmogrifier

[Stay Puft]

1. A Clockwork Orange 76
2. McCabe & Mrs. Miller 67.5
3. The French Connection 35.5
4. Punishment Park 31
5. Straw Dogs 30.5
6. Walkabout 27.5
7. The Last Picture Show 25
8. Harold and Maude 22.5
9t. Fata Morgana 19
9t. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory 19

Almost:
Dirty Harry 17
Bananas 12.5
Two-Lane Blacktop 12.5
The Abominable Dr. Phibes 12
Duel 11

[Stay Puft]

And I'm spent. Au revoir, Match Cut.

[Spinal]

And I'm spent. Au revoir, Match Cut.

OK, you can have some coffee now.

[soitgoes...]

"Overrated" -- baby dollFor once baby doll and I are in complete agreement.

[Spinal]

There are overrated films on this list, but A Clockwork Orange is not one of them.

[Grouchy]

Great list. I'm all kinds of thrilled that enough people around here are Dr. Phibes fans that it made honorable mention.