Adam's Favorite Movies

[Melville]

Hmmmm, yeah well with Antonioni I've only seen 4 of his films. So I said The Passenger might be his best since I enjoy making reckless, unfounded, sweeping declarations, but maybe Zabriskie Point or some such shit is the better movie? I will definitely take The Passenger ahead of L'eclisse, though, mostly because for me, it's the snazzier, more interesting bit of filmmaking. Either way, Alain Delon's still the coolest cat around, for sure,

I didn't find anything very interesting about the filmmaking in The Passenger, but I might have been looking in the wrong place. The opening and closing scenes of L'Eclisse, on the other hand, contained some of the most interesting explorations and utilizations of space that I've seen. Haven't seen Zabriskie Point; what I've heard about it sounds a bit silly for my taste.

EDIT: though I should amend that to note that some of the editing early in The Passenger and the very long panning shot at the end were both interesting.

[Adam]

Dave Chappelle's Block Party
Michel Gondry - 2005

This is an example of when keeping it real goes right

Once upon a time, Dave Chappelle felt way guilty for making a ton of money and so he dreamt up an under-the-radar concert/party in Brooklyn to confirm his humanity. Here is the glorious fruit born from that dream tree. A block party that's welcoming and warm and vibrant and flavorful and funny. The concert is stacked with some of the most important musicians of the '90s and '00s. It rains, but nobody cares. The audience is made up of regular folk. "5000 black people dancing in the rain. 19 white people peppered in the crowd." In addition to any locals who wanted in, Dave invited various others who wouldn't normally be able to go to this sort of thing to come and watch, too. And he got the terminally whimsical Michel Gondry to capture it all on film

Gondry's probably my favorite director of the aughts. He has a flair for putting things together in such a way to maximize all good feelings and Chappelle and Friends emit a great deal of good feelings. Block Party has an easy pace to it and spread throughout all the dynamic performances, there are little slices of life thrown in and comedy sketches and stories told and mini-profiles on very special people. On the one hand we have Kanye West, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, The Roots, Dead Prez, Common, The Fugees and on and on and on. Every artist getting a shot in the spotlight. Then on the other hand we get to meet kids who are clearly happy to be alive. We meet unique individuals with a variety of talents and quirks and they're all a joy. Dave Chappelle's usually hanging around, too. Telling jokes and acting goofy and having fun and making people laugh

And I mean the music alone stands in its own right. Not that you'd ever want to, but if you did take out all the good vibrations and the Chappelle and the celebrating community and the Gondry - you still have The Roots and Lauryn Hill and whatnot making beautiful, positive music in the rain. You still have Black Star at the height of their powers. You still have Jill Scott bellowing away. There isn't a musical performance in this film that falls flat. But of course, yeah, it's not only the music that makes Block Party sing

It's just so rare to see something that can sustain the level of giddiness or exuberance you get here. Chappelle calls one of the days leading up to the party the greatest day of his career and you totally buy that. This is one of those movies where you have a huge shit-eating grin on your face the whole time you're watching it, partly because you know everyone involved was having the time of their lives making it. This film feels like a hug. It opens its arms to people from all walks of life and you just live in this happy, happy world for 90 minutes of infectious jubilation

So now I'm getting ridiculous and comparing films to hugs, but that's fine. Here's my absolute favorite thing about Block Party: Like so many of my favorite albums, when this film's over, I feel it ringing in my heart for hours afterward. Ringing right down to the very cockles of my core. You can taste this movie. This movie reverberates. It sings. It flat-out flows

Greatest concert film, ever? Yeah, probably

[MadMan]

Block Party is one of my favorite movies of the 2000s. Does it crack my Top 20 for the decade? Nope. But is it beyond awesome, and a joy to behold? Hell yes. Not only did introduce me to some really cool acts, but it also made showcased some that I truly like a lot. Plus that scene with the marching band, with Dave Chappelle just jamming out, rules.

[Qrazy]

Yeah Chappelle's Block Party is great.

[Adam]

Plus that scene with the marching band, with Dave Chappelle just jamming out, rules.

Yes. Part of my love for this film is definitely due to the fact that I am totally in the bag for Chappelle. I could watch that guy do just about anything for 90 minutes

[D_Davis]

Dave Chappelle's Block Party
Michel Gondry - 2005


Greatest concert film, ever? Yeah, probably

Great film, I really like how uplifting it is - it's a celebration of art and humanity, but not my favorite. Best concert film, IMO, is Pink Floyd: Live in Pompeii. Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense and The Cure in Orange are also up there.

[Adam]

I've never seen Live in Pompeii or The Cure in Orange, but speaking in my capacity as a rabid fan of both Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme, I will say Block Party is slightly more entertaining than Stop Making Sense. But both of those films are trying to do way different things, so whatever

[MadMan]

Yes. Part of my love for this film is definitely due to the fact that I am totally in the bag for Chappelle. I could watch that guy do just about anything for 90 minutes

So could I. He's constantly entertaining. Plus the movie contains Mos Def, who's fast becoming a favorite of mine in terms of acting and his music as well.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Greatest concert film, ever? Yeah, probably

?

[Adam]

Last Night
Don McKellar - 1999

Con los pobres de la tierra, quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra, me complace más que el mar
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

Serving as the loveliest bit of counter-programming imaginable for all those offensively garish and tasteless apocalyptic disaster flicks churned out at the tail end of the 20th century; Don McKellar’s Toronto-set Last Night is about the end of the world. What it’s really about, though, is the improbably redemptive and incorruptible nature of mankind. How we can (mostly) shine just as brightly in our darkest moments, no matter what horribleness is staring us down. At the end of this film, everything that has ever lived or will ever live is gone. Somehow, though, that’s all right. It remains a poignant, moving, deliciously irreverent and, maybe above all else, hopeful experience

But yes, for unexplained reasons, the Earth is going to end. The public at large has known about this for a couple of months now and, for the most part, folks have come to terms with the inevitability of their fate. Last Night focuses on our final six hours and how everyone chooses to spend this time differently. Callum Keith Renne wants to go out humping, Sarah Polley decides to celebrate alongside her fellow man, David Cronenberg plans on committing mutually assisted suicide with his wife and so on. Character threads intertwine freely throughout and everybody leaves a mark on one another. People say their goodbyes and then they move on. Our hero, Patrick (Don McKellar), is going to stay home by himself; maybe listening to a bit of music and drinking wine. He is comfortable enough with himself, he says, that he doesn’t feel the need to go out and manufacture relationships just so he won‘t die alone. Or at least that was the thought until he meets the perpetually frazzled Sandra (Sandra Oh). She’s stranded miles away from her husband. Her car has been destroyed and cell phones don’t work, anymore. She’s pregnant and she wants to know if that’s wrong. She needs help and so Patrick helps her

Disarmingly calm for a film about the end of days, this is still a very honest movie. There is confused violence and general dispiritedness and most everything else you’d expect out of the story of individuals facing their last few hours of life. Vitally, though, Last Night is tonally unique in its down-to-earth, existential and almost bemused take on the apocalypse. From that standpoint, it’s closest cousin is probably Miracle Mile, though this film is much richer. And it’s all very Canadian, whatever that might mean. The cast from top to bottom is pitch-perfect. McKellar, who is generally awesome in everything I've seen him in, especially embodies the film’s abstract, deadpan charm. But really everybody gets their moments

The film was apparently made after someone challenged McKellar to make a movie concerning the turning millennium and the Armageddon which certain loons decided was coming with it. His version of the end of the world openly plays on those overarching millennial anxieties, but he’s way more interested in examining how this would all go down on a personal, human level. He’s very successful, I think. In fact, it's almost a shame the world didn't end on Y2K Eve, because humanity couldn’t have hoped for a more elegantly bittersweet swan song than Last Night

[Adam]

Portrait of Jennie
William Dieterle - 1948

What an indescribably, intoxicatingly romantic film

Joseph Cotten stars as Eben Adams; a frustrated and starving painter in Depression-era New York City who has technical ability, but has never been able to realize his full potential. Eben’s jollily stereotypical Irish friend (David Wayne) is quick to tell him he’s living the dream, doing what he loves, and he’s got a concerned, kindly art dealer (Ethel Barrymore) watching his back but, all told, it’s still bad times for the guy. Nobody wants his work (it's ironic Adams can't sell his boring paintings of landscapes since he's starring in a film with some of the most beautifully rendered and stunning backdrops/skylines in celluloid history) and he‘s desperate to latch onto something, ANYthing, that will spark his creative juices. He eventually does find his muse in the form of Jennie (Jennifer Jones); a girl who appears to him intermittently in varying stages of age and otherworldliness. Jennie may or may not be a time traveling ghost, but either way, Adams doesn’t sweat it too bad and neither do we. It’s not long before he’s thoroughly swooning and, more importantly, painting his masterpiece

As Eben’s fascination and obsession over Jennie grows, so do the visual stakes. This is a film bathed in beauty. Really I can’t even begin to do justice in words to the jaw-dropping and completely innovative cinematography and art direction. It’s all very dreamy and very atmospheric - an absolute feast for the senses and an experience to be swept up in. There’s just so much here. The vaseline-covered lens which melts Eben’s peculiar visions of Jennie in stirring waves of fog. The canvas shot-through and superimposed over compositions, creating the effect of a living, breathing painting and blurring the line between artist and subject. The fantastic realization of a romanticized, snow-covered Central Park. The ethereal greenish tint that drips over frames in the climatic scenes of a brutal storm at sea. The shadows dancing over faces, casting characters in shrouds of tantalizing mystery and on and on and on

The entire film is just one big burst of style and artistry and that’s a reflection of Eben’s own orgasmic creative awakening. Drab and cold NYC morphs into a phantasmagoric smorgasbord, black and white turns to color and Eben himself becomes the success he was always supposed to be. He’s lived an impoverished life and we meet him at the absolute end of his rope and then out of nothing comes a woman from the heavens who finally opens him up. She frees him from whatever was stymieing his abilities and gives him an inspiration to last a lifetime

In the end, even if he wasn’t ready to give her up, Jennie slips away from Adams. He comes out the other side okay, though. And once he’s lost her, he reveals himself to be the patron saint of any artist who‘s experienced a period of crippling creative blockage. Inspiration is hard to come by when you’re toiling away in abject poverty, living an increasingly unfulfilling life, but there’s always hope and there’s always dreams. Maybe you’ll never make anything as gorgeous as Portrait of Jennie, but at least you haven’t sold out, yet

[hey it's ethan]

Glad to see Last Night. I saw it over five years ago and it's stuck with me since.