Adam's Favorite Movies

[Adam]

Because I know you're all very interested

I'm going to try not to make this lame, but easier said than done I guess. It's not going to be in any sort of order, either, because I'm never happy with the lists I make. Just going to do little write-ups of random favorites, whatever I feel like writing about at the time. And I'll pick stuff I don't see on a lot of other folk's lists, as a change of pace

Let the self indulgence begin

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS
MODERN ROMANCE
KING OF HEARTS
THE PASSENGER
SHALLOW GRAVE
FLOATING CLOUDS
DAVE CHAPPELLE'S BLOCK PARTY
LAST NIGHT
PORTRAIT OF JENNIE

[Adam]

Pineapple Express
David Gordon Green - 2008

Okay, so Pineapple Express pretty much had me about from three minutes in when Bill Hader starts pantomiming a blowjob and then lets loose one of the most devastating "Fuck you"s I've ever heard. And it's not just because of Hader's brilliant delivery. On the one hand, this moment feels so like any other chunk of Apatowian humor that pervaded seemingly every big-time comedy in the aughts. But then you notice how subtly active the camera is as it smoothly moves in for a close-up on Hader and there's just a sense that this is something totally different. There's a level of artistry and nuance and warmness and playfulness going on here that feels so fresh and disarming and it never lets up the whole way through. Purely entertaining as all get-out, in the shouty moments just as much as in the quiet ones

It's all because of David Gordon Green. David Gordon Green has the touch. It would be so interesting if guys like him directed movies like this more often. Look at Eastbound and Down for the easiest dichotomal example. The Gordon Green helmed episodes of Eastbound are darkly comic masterpieces on par with the UK Office at the height of its back-breaking cringiness. The Jody Hill/Adam McKay episodes, meanwhile, can't help but fall flat by comparison because they're so dang conventional, despite the wonderful writing/performances. And it's the same deal with Pineapple Express. Pineapple Express is everything that's great about Knocked Up or Anchorman, except it's handled with ten times the craft and care and talent

That said, impressively, this would almost definitely still be a fairly dynamite ride even if it was removed from the filter of Gordon Green. Not one of the actors hits a note that rings false and you get the sense this was already an affable enough, offbeat Midnight Run riff on the page before all the improvised material was introduced. Such a loose tone to it and it's reminiscent of many of my favorite '80s, Into the Night-ish movies in that you can never quite get a handle on where it's going. It's a testament to the film's ramshackle charm that even when things get absurdly, awkwardly violent towards the end, it never once feels like a buzzkill

Speaking of buzzkills, this is a personal list, so let me get a little boring and personal. A big whopping factor in this film being wrote up here is because of the time I came to it in my life. Intelligently stupid movies like this, even when they're directed by hipster-approved icons like David Gordon Green, aren't usually the first thing you'd think of when trying to come up with especially impressionable films for yourself. It seems silly to write how important this dumb movie is to me and I don't even have a great story to back it up. All it is, is that I went and saw Pineapple Express with someone I really cared about at a midnight screening the week before I left for college. Last summer of my adolescence, essentially. We were very high and so was everyone else in the very packed house and it remains my favorite movie-going experience, ever. So I feel like I owe it for that. I also feel like this movie was made for me

And it all leads to that final scene, which is so tender and delicate and lovely. The closest approximation of a couple of potheads shooting the shit I've seen a major motion picture nail. The fact that they're twinklingly reminiscing about car chases and gunfights instead of parties or tv watching or whatnot is beside the point. This scene is played so chillingly accurate it hurts. It's an observed and beautiful ode to everyone who gets it, just like the rest of the film. And like I say, on a personal level, I already recognize that this was a formative experience in my life and I'm just a little over a year removed from it, so chances are I'm only gonna look back at Pineapple Express more fondly as the years drag on

[Boner M]

And it all leads to that final scene, which is so tender and delicate and lovely. The closest approximation of a couple of potheads shooting the shit I've seen a major motion picture nail. The fact that they're twinklingly reminiscing about car chases and gunfights instead of parties or tv watching or whatnot is beside the point. This scene is played so chillingly accurate it hurts. It's an observed and beautiful ode to everyone who gets it, just like the rest of the film. And like I say, on a personal level, I already recognize that this was a formative experience in my life and I'm just a little over a year removed from it, so chances are I'm only gonna look back at Pineapple Express more fondly as the years drag on

Solid paragraph. Lookin' forward to the rest of the list!

[Adam]

Modern Romance
Albert Brooks - 1981

Okay, let me ask you something... If a person's not home, and you start driving around their house, and you drive around and around and around and you start driving around the city and you're going ninety miles an hour and you're calling them every four seconds and you don't think of anything else, what is that?

Is that not love?

I think I try to paint myself as this hopeless romantic sometimes, when the truth is I'm so much closer to the semi-deranged, neurotic id that is Albert Brooks in this movie. I see the worst of myself in Modern Romance's quixotic, self-absorbed, overly possessive antihero. This is a man who calls old girlfriends on a jealous whim after taking too many quaaludes and goes on painfully awkward dates with them. He's self aware in a way, but he can never get out of his head long enough to see the forest for the trees because he's terminally bogged down in what he convinces himself to be true love

Brooks plays Robert Cole like he plays all his surrogates, making slight tweaks to serve darker subject matter than usual. The object of his affection is played by Kathryn Harrold and if it were up to her, their relationship would probably have been legitimately over well before the point where we catch up to it in the movie. But Cole has this perverse way of breaking down her defenses with flopsweat and they seem like they're destined to perform this sad dance of breaking up and getting back together until they die or at least until she grows some balls. When the movie's over, we leave the relationship on the same note we started with and it all makes you laugh, even if you should be cringing

To lighten things up, the film takes a couple of detours to riff on some of the less destructive character faults of the Albert Brooks archetype. The scene where Super Dave (Brooks' real life brother) takes advantage of Cole's insecurities in a sporting goods store is a classic. And almost as an added bonus, there's a subplot woven in revolving around the editing of a b-grade science fiction movie starring George Kennedy. There's nearly enough material there to make up a decent satire of Hollywood, but in the end it exists to illustrate how Cole's obsessive behavior has bled into every other part of his life

If Albert Brooks is the Left Coast's answer to Woody Allen, then I guess you could call Modern Romance his depressing spin on Annie Hall. The fact is, though, that's a supreme disservice to this movie as there's a lot more agonizing truth here and a lot less whining. This is Brooks' magnum opus because it never sacrifices that truth or its unrelenting bleakness for the sake of laughs and it gets them anyway. It's a movie about clinging onto those you no longer really love because you can't bear the thought of seeing them find happiness with someone else. It's an almighty condemnation of the romantically selfish as much as it is a bizarre tribute to them and it's also the greatest romantic comedy I've ever seen

[Melville]

It's not going to be in any sort of order, either, because I'm never happy with the lists I make. Just going to do little write-ups of random favorites, whatever I feel like writing about at the time.

This seems like by far the most practical approach to such a thread.

Great reviews thus far.

[B-side]

I'll be watching.

[Derek]

Great pick with Modern Romance and spot-on review. It's my favorite from Brooks as well.

[Ezee E]

Pineapple Express has a very good first half or so, with an awful second half.

I basically watch it up until the car chase, and call it quits after that.

[Raiders]

Pineapple Express has a very good first half or so, with an awful second half.

I basically watch it up until the car chase, and call it quits after that.

On a second viewing, I think I liked the second half even more than before. It works especially well when paired with that final scene. It sort of lends the entire second half to a kind of ridiculous, bizarre and incongruous stoned fairytale. It does drag in spots and I wish the section was shorter (or maybe even more action-packed), but it's still pretty great.

[Ezee E]

On a second viewing, I think I liked the second half even more than before. It works especially well when paired with that final scene. It sort of lends the entire second half to a kind of ridiculous, bizarre and incongruous stoned fairytale. It does drag in spots and I wish the section was shorter (or maybe even more action-packed), but it's still pretty great.

Agreed that the second half is a stoned out fantasy, but it's bizarreness did not make me laugh at all.

[Adam]

Well, obviously I disagree with that, but thanks for reading, everybody

[Adam]

King of Hearts
Phillipe de Broca - 1966

This one's for anybody who's ever felt like the last sane man (or woman) on Earth. At the tail end of the first World War, Alan Bates' Charles Plumpick is a mild-mannered Scottish soldier sent in to diffuse German time bombs stashed somewhere in an apparently abandoned French village. Once he gets there, though, the town is quickly overrun by a group of inmates from the local asylum who begin acting out their most whimsical fantasies. Plumpick gets swept up in their madness and it's not very long before he realizes that as crazy as they all are, they're nothing compared to the lunatics he's been answering to

At first blush, the film's take on warfare/humanity is a naive and overly simplistic one, but actually it's sneakily perceptive in its own surreal way. It's never subtle about what it wants to say, but it never insults your intelligence, either. Though its slapstick and performances can seem over-the-top at times, it's the more understated moments that stick with you. In maybe the film's most iconic scene, a young woman in a yellow tutu walks a tightrope between two buildings. It's an oddly musical walk that puts you in a trance and makes you, like Plumpick, forget completely about the bomb that's sure to kill all these wonderful people. King of Hearts has a lot of scenes like that. This is a movie that's so full of love and goodness and charm and unabashed silliness that it can be irresistible to even the most cynical of bastards

As much as King of Hearts stands as a staunch denunciation of the stupidity of war, it's simultaneously a celebration of the joy of being human. Plumpick is a man on a mission, but it's a mission he was ordered to blindly undertake. The Man has stripped him of his backbone and his identity and his common sense and his humanity and it takes a band of whacked-out loons to make him do something about it. He's with them for only a few hours, but in that time, he dances and laughs and falls in love and it's great

When push finally comes to shove, Plumpick decides to leave his company and play out his days in the mental asylum where his newfound family lives. While that ending is ostensibly a happy one for Plumpick, it's also tellingly lacking much hope for the rest of us. If the people in charge are more dangerous, deranged and demented than a bunch of mental cases, we're kinda royally screwed, yeah? King of Hearts was an immensely popular midnight movie amongst American college students throughout the seventies and, unfortunately, its message is just as relevant today as it was to those who grew up in disillusionment with the conflict in Vietnam. No matter what, humanity should never be defined by the wars we wage. War is an endless, futile, horrible and, above all, absurd proposition. Most people probably don't need some farcical film to tell them that, but yeah, sometimes it is still nice to be assured that you're not, in fact, the last sane man (or woman) on Earth

[Adam]

By the by, King of Hearts also has the beyond gorgeous Geneviève Bujold at her absolute foxiest playing the woman of Alan Bates' dreams (and mine). So whether you're a peace-loving lamb or a war-mongering asshole, it's worth watching this movie, anyway, if only to ogle her for two hours

[MadMan]

I've only seen Pinapple Express, which is a wonderful, hilarious, and awesome movie. Probably one of my favorites of the current decade, too. The other ones I have not heard of, but I am considering putting them on my Netflix to watch. Keep going man, keep going.

[Raiders]

Ugh. I hated King of Hearts. It's a silly little film that struck me as being so stupid as to make the idea of war seem less stupid by comparison.

[Adam]

I can kinda sorta see how KOH would be irritating for some people, but I dunno, it's so dang delightful

Did you ever consider that maybe you're just a heartless monster?


"That's you all over, Raiders, bad taste and no heart"

[Adam]

The Passenger
Michelangelo Antonioni - 1975

In a neat bit of stunt casting, Nicholson plays against type as disillusioned and laconic BBC journalist David Locke, a man who's frustrated, detached and disconnected in life. Locke's on assignment in Africa when the film opens, composing a piece about revolutionary guerrillas, ruthless local dictators and corrupt political agendas. He meets a fellow named Robertson there in a hotel and they have a pleasant enough chat. But the next day, Robertson dies of a heart attack and Locke, quite casually, assumes the man's identity

Everyone in Locke's previous life believes him to be dead. He's abandoned his wife and child and career and now he just has to decide what he wants to become. He takes his time. Turns out Robertson was a gun runner and maybe more for the North African rebels and so Locke, for no particular reason other than maybe sheer curiosity, decides to start taking Robertson's meetings in exotic locales all around the world. Somewhere along the way, he teams up with the beautiful and mysterious Girl, played by Maria Schneider, who further convinces him to carry on acting out Robertson's itinerary because, well, what else does he have to do? They fall in love. Meanwhile, Locke's wife becomes obsessed with watching old footage of him and eventually sets out to find this "Robertson" whom she's learned knew her husband back in Africa. Soon Locke is in over his head, being pursued by shadowy Government agents whilst juggling his feelings for The Girl with his determination to escape his old life

Just from that plot description, The Passenger almost sounds like an existential riff on Graham Greene, but Antonioni seems bored by all the superficial globetrotting intrigue. He's more interested in giving the viewer an experience and a feast for the eyes, assuredly letting us figure certain mysteries out on our own. There are exquisite flashback sequences that are, I would think, unique in their execution in the history of cinema. There are compositions of cinematic artistry that will remind you why you love movies so dang much. Luciano Vitoli's camerawork is remarkable. The penultimate shot, which tracks out of a hotel window and around a courtyard, is over 7 minutes long and it's very famous and you probably have to watch it a couple of times before you understand what it means. There's so much here and yet The Passenger has a real, palpable emptiness to it, reflecting effectively on Locke's inner angst

Nicholson plays Locke with the kind of understated naturalism he used to do so well. He's a traditional Antonioni protagonist - consumed by the pervasive sensation of ennui and lacking direction. Here is a man who acts on the very appealing notion of assuming someone else's identity, though he's curiously dispassionate about it all. He sees something in Maria Schneider's Girl and he wants a life where he can believe in a cause or a faith or anything, but that never really happens for him. Locke is a fascinating character, mostly because he's played so close to the vest with his larger motivations remaining relatively unclear all the way to the end

The film is languidly paced, especially so when you consider that it's about a man desperately trying to outrun himself. Every shot is held a beat longer than it should; a lot of lingering going on. The Passenger is clearly an Antonioni film in those ways, though maybe slightly more accessible if only for the presence of Nicholson. It might be the director's best. A visually wonderful, unflinchingly unsentimental exploration of identity, politics, belief, life, death and love

Play me out, Iggy

[Adam]

Shallow Grave
Danny Boyle - 1994

Oh yes, I believe in friends. I believe we need them. But if one day you find that you just can't trust them anymore... well, what then? What then?

Absolutely required viewing for any new roommates; Shallow Grave documents the disintegration of a friendship between three snarky yuppies as they try to figure out how to handle the package deal of a corpse(s) and a suitcase full of money that finds its way into their fab Edinburgh flat. Things start out merrily enough, but it all devolves pretty quickly into the realm of strange vibrations, mistrust, paranoia, murder and dismemberment. And then there's the ending - an easy candidate for the most satisfying in probably the past twenty years of film. You might see all the twists coming from a mile away, but the final couple of punchlines are still very much worth it

When Shallow Grave came out, it was immediately tagged as Hitchcock for the hip, techno-listening Gen X set. This is maybe one of the only movies where you can say that sorta thing and not mean it as a total, flippant dismissal. The Hitch wannabes have made some snazzy looking pictures over the years, but the things they never seem to lock down are a) the sense of humor and b) the intelligence. Shallow Grave does it right, though, and you won't find many more modern thrillers that so nail such a rare brew of biting drollery, grisly horror and casual cool. It's the kind of thing where you've seen the bare bones story told before, yet seldomly this well

It's also a dark as fuck character study of a few very specific types operating under a unique brand of tension. A damning social statement about the level of morality that exists amongst affluent young adults once they get within even a whiff of a little bit of money. The film more or less comes out and openly demands you take a moment and think about what you would do if put in the place of Ewan McGregor's prickish, dreaming journalist, Kerry Fox's smug, aloof doctor or Chris Eccleston's awkward, squirrelly accountant. Once things begin getting progressively more gruesome, the idea is that you see yourself in the characters and try to come to terms with the unfortunate choices they make. None of them are particularly likable people, but they still become pretty sympathetic figures when their backs are up against the wall

So yes, it's all very smart and morbid and flashy and weird, but the real key with Shallow Grave, I think, is how much of a flat-out delight it is. For a film with such obnoxious and despicable characters and moments of such abject revulsion, it's also wildly hilarious and breezily paced. Boyle's always had the visual flair and the kinetic enthusiasm, but the thing is I don't know if he'll ever get back the pitch-perfect performances, the delicious snideness or just the pure, diabolical wit Shallow Grave boasts

[Melville]

It might be the director's best. A visually wonderful...

This is the first movie on your list that I've seen, and I can't say I agree with your assessment: I thought that L'Eclisse was a far more powerful and visually wonderful exploration of similar themes. However, I'll repeat that you've got some great reviews here. I'd rep you if I weren't all out of rep.

[Boner M]

I found Shallow Grave empty and un-thrilling. I find Boyle pretty worthless outside of Trainspotting & 28 Days Later.

The Passenger is wonderful, though I'm inclined to agree with Melville that L'Eclisse is better.

Great reviews for both, though, though. Keep 'em coming.

[Adam]

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

And Boyle - I'm not a fan outside of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. Like I say, I just think Shallow Grave had the right mix of everything for what it was trying to do. You don't even think it's funny, Boner?

[Adam]

Floating Clouds
Mikio Naruse - 1955

Floating Clouds opens with Japanese repatriate Yukiko Koda, played by the wonderful Hideko Takamine, returning to the country she ran away from years before. She doesn't really have anywhere to go, so she turns to Tomioka (Masayuki Mori), a former colleague in Indochina whom she had an affair with during the war. He had promised to leave his wife for her, but he doesn't. Yukiko is only slightly deterred by this. She has built up a great love in her mind and she spends many years trying to convince Tomioka to give himself to her. Even after Tomioka's wife dies, he still can't commit to Yukiko, but by this point she has fully deluded herself into thinking her obsession and devotion will have a happy ending. Despite her love, though, Tomioka always remains distant. He deceives her, he carries on with younger women and just in general he gives her the total high hat while she endures all manner of horrible shit. Maybe he loves her in the only way he can love someone, maybe he doesn't love anything anymore or maybe he never loved her in the first place? We kind of get the answer to this in the bummer of an ending, though by then it's too late. Whatever the case, Yukiko doesn't want to let go of her love. She gradually loses her naiveté and innocence, but through everything, no matter how bitter she gets, Tomioka remains all she has to hold on to. She can't move on and it's that heartbreaking spirit that ruins her

I have watched two Naruse/Takamine pairings. They are a match made in celluloid heaven. Takamine is one of the most adept actors I've ever seen at communicating things without speaking so she's served well by Naruse's subtle, almost indistinct style. There's a certain intoxicating lyricism to the sustained sequences of Yukiko and Tomioka ambling up and down roads and side roads, but those scenes are so enchanting precisely because Naruse never calls attention to his tricks. The director had an easy mastery of how to tell this type of story. Floating Clouds is about a tragic and decidedly unrequited love and Naruse most deftly shapes that heartache through reminiscences and graceful flashbacks to a past life when his two stars were together

The transitions between ripe and sunny wartime Indochina and soul-crushing post-war Japan are drastic and jarring (though smoothly edited). It's immediately clear that those crazy kids who fucked around in Dalat are worlds apart from the very different individuals who meet again in Tokyo. Tomioka has been broken by a war he didn't even fight in. He actually makes several references to their time in Indochina being like a "dream" and that's not meant wholly in the figurative sense. As we go through this life, each past chapter and each past love gets cast aside for a new one. Things get hazy and confusing and we often project/invent thing that weren't even there to begin with. Yukiko is longing for happiness with a man she has forced herself to love and she's blinded herself to all his outward stoicism, lies and affairs. She's been hurt before. She tries not to consider the thought that she idealized their time in Indochina to protect herself from pain. But when people desperately try to cling to those bygone times, all that happens is their present and future becomes fractured. These fleeting memories and feelings and hopes and loves and dreams are ultimately doomed to float from us like clouds out through the ether of time and sometimes we just have to reconcile ourselves with the idea that the past's in the past and that's that

[soitgoes...]

Word.

[B-side]

Meh.:lol:

[Qrazy]

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

And Boyle - I'm not a fan outside of Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and 28 Days Later. Like I say, I just think Shallow Grave had the right mix of everything for what it was trying to do. You don't even think it's funny, Boner?

Zabriskie Point is a terrible, terrible film.