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 Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#245
The Red Shoes (G.B., 1948)
Really nice drama about a Prima Ballerina who stars in the eponymous Hans Christian Anderson tale. Her life begins to parallel the play, tragedy ensues. Excellent acting, spectacular sets, and an incredible marriage of ballet (my fiance is a ballerina so I got all kinds of insight from her on this film) and cinema. Very artful and well made movie.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#246
An American in Paris (U.S., 1951)
This is another Gene Kelly spectacle, filled with fun dance numbers and excellent music by George Gershwin (if there's no other reason to see this one, see it for Gershwin). About an American ex-pat painter who falls for a very stand-offish (at first) Parisian. All the makings of a great Kelly picture, except the sets kinda sucked as they were clearly shooting most of it on soundstages and backlots. Decent movie overall, but when compared with some other Kelly films, it pales. A good one for die-hard musical fans.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#247
The Battleship Potemkin (U.S.S.R., 1925)
A Leninist piece of propaganda that shows the mutinous uprising of the crew of a Russian battleship, and that event triggers the proletariat on shore in Odessa to rise up against their "tsarist" overlords, with violent results. Really original filmmaking, great acting. About as enthralling as a movie with a propagandist agenda can get.
It's also the film that gave us this classic image:
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Burke Dennings
decapitron
Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#248
The Great Train Robbery (U.S., 1903)
The first Western. A couple of bandits rob a train and are pursued by lawmen- straightforward story. This is more of a film of historical significance; the gunplay and corpses must've been quite a shock to earlier audiences. And the final shot is of a man looking directly at you, gun cocked and pointed into your face. As he fires, the movie ends. An incredibly important piece of early cinematic story telling.
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Burke Dennings
decapitron
Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#249
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Germany, 1920)
This is a quintessential example of the finest German Expressionism. Morbidity, shadows, askew angles, hammy acting. It's about one Dr. Caligari who is part of a travelling circus and he brings along a "somnabulist", some kind of voo-doo zombie that Caligari mentally controls. Mischief and murder come to town with them. Cool score, and as stated, a masterpiece of the German Expressionist cinematic form.
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Burke Dennings
decapitron
Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#250
le Jetee (France, 1962)
This sentimental sci-fi film tells the story of a "guinea pig" guy sent back from post-apocolyptical times to see what the fuck went wrong. He becomes obsessed with a possible childhood memory and a woman. Yes, this movie was remade as 12 Monkeys. Le Jetee was remarkable in that it is a film composed entirely of a montage of still photographs, with an omniscient narrator moving the plot along. The effect is quite powerful; it shows how no matter now long or large life seems, it's still composed of the tiniest fragments. Gorgeous movie, top filmmaking.
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Burke Dennings
decapitron
Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#251
The Birth of a Nation (U.S., 1915)
D.W. Griffith's sweeping epic about the antebellum South, the American Civil War, and the re-building of the South is a controversial but important film. While it is blatantly racist propoganda (it implies that the Ku Klux Klan is the force that is going to unite and save our nation), this film is a true innovator. It created many cinematographic elements that we take for granted these days. For examples: the zoom-in close up and the tracking shot. So hard to imagine films without the work these originators did, despite the racial content (which was more-or-less the thinking of the time). This movie deserves a watch for sure. It's a compelling story and formed the mould for so many eventual films.
Okay, so that means I'm more than a quarter of the way through the book!  Thanks to anyone who reads this, it's a fun project.
Edited by Burke Dennings (07/06/12 12:14 AM)
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Burke Dennings
decapitron
Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#252
An Andaulusian Dog (France, 1929)
This strange piece of surrealism was brought to us by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. It seems like a montage of strange images and scenes: a man hauling a piano with a dead horse on it, a fistful of ants, a dismembered hand casually pick up from the street, and most famously, a quite visceral shot of a razor slashing an eyeball. Time runs weird in this one, and I'm not sure, but I think there may be a semi-coherent, semi-cohesive relationship story going on here. Fascinating art film.
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 Trypppy
Enthusiast
Registered: 07/19/11
Posts: 1,316
Last seen: 2 months, 10 days
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very cool thread 
keep em coming man!
--------------------
AFOAF once told me to do drugs, so then I did.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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 Re: Burke's 1001 Movie Project  [Re: Trypppy]
#16489457 - 07/06/12 11:51 AM (10 months, 13 days ago) |
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Thank you. 
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Burke Dennings
decapitron
Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#253
Dracula (U.S., 1931)
This classic vampire story contains Bela Lugosi's career-defining performance as the eponymous vampire. Great acting and writing, nice set and art design. But Lugosi is such a scene steatler. This film helped settle Hollywood in the mindset of "horror = $" and is responsible for so much of what horror fans love today. Very cool flick.
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Burke Dennings
decapitron
Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#254
Intolerance (U.S., 1916)
This is one that doesn't live up to it's hype, in my opinion, but I may just be looking at it in the shadow of D.W. Griffith's 'The Birth of a Nation'. It tells tales of love's struggles in four different time periods, all inter-cut and some out of sequence, again proving what an originator Griffith was. The sets were astonishing: literally massive monuments and thousands of extras- no small feat for the era. None the less, I never fully got pulled into the stories enough to make me care for them or the characters. Still a good sight better than most movies made today, but I'll probably never watch this 3 hour endurance test again.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#255
Frankenstien (U.S., 1931)
Little needs to be said about this masterpiece. A horror film with heart. We're all familiar with the story. Boris Karloff (billed as "?" in the credits) and his costume design are perfect. He plays the role with touching humanity. Not "scary" by today's standards, but a keystone in the horror foundation. Essential viewing for any fan of the genre.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#256
Way Down East (U.S., 1920)
Yeah, I'm on a bit of a D.W. Griffith kick right now. This one stars Lillian Gish as a naive girl who falls for a slick douchebag. He impregnates her (by staging a marriage to get her to sleep with him) and bounces. Picking up the pieces, she finds a new guy, but her past, which was considered sordid back then (while filmed in the '20s, this movie takes place in the 1890's), catches up to her and this is really a story of love and redemption. Gish and Griffith are great, this movie shows how he was able to adapt to the rapidly changing times in the cinematic world. This was also the most visually appealling Griffith film I've seen to date.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#257
Ben-hur (U.S. 1959)
At nearly 3.75 hours, this film has a lot in it and going for it. Charleton Heston stars in the title role, Judah Ben-hur, living in the Middle East around the early first century- they work Jesus into the plot. He's a Roman made to be a slave as part of a frame-job commited by Messala, a childhood friend who also kills Ben-hur's ma and sis. Revenge becomes the theme, climaxing with the infamous chariot race. Great costumes, great sets, great acting. Heston rocked it out. There were over 50,000 extras used! Even with it's protracted length, this one is still worth it. (That's what she said.)
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#258
Ghandi (U.S., 1982)
This was a biopic with vision. Director Richard Attenborough really seemed to know what he wanted, the film seems very meticulously and lovingly arranged. Ben Kingsley did a very high degree of "method" acting here, and it shows; he becomes Ghandi. There are a lot of on-location shots of exotic locations that I enjoyed. Regardless of how historically accurate this film is (while there are omissions, pris, there is a lot that happened as it happened), it was well-made, informative, and enjoyable.
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novum
crap game
Registered: 03/04/06
Posts: 25,172
Loc: the city of dis
Last seen: 7 hours, 42 minutes
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best review in years
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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Re: Burke's 1001 Movie Project [Re: novum] 2
#16510150 - 07/10/12 05:11 PM (10 months, 9 days ago) |
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#259
The Producers (U.S., 1968)
I love that Mel Brooks has always had a sense of humor about Nazism. This story is about a producer who can't make a profit on his plays, and an accountant who figures out a way to turn a profit on a flop. Extremely funny stuff, some of Brooks' best. Great acting from Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. So much better than the re-make.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#260
Hannah and Her Sisters (U.S., 1986)
Another really funny Woody Allen movie about inter-personal relationships, their highlights, their complications. He plays basically plays himself in this one, as in all other Woody Allen movies, and Michael Caine and a solid cast of the Hannah sisters are all really nice. Funny stuff, great music choices, and all the other stuff you love in an Allen pic.
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Burke Dennings
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Registered: 11/29/04
Posts: 47,025
Loc: Moscow Disco
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#261
Children of a Lesser God (U.S., 1986)
I'm not really one for dramatic romance stories, this one was a little tedious for me. A deaf-student teacher falls in love with a difficult deaf woman, played brilliantly by Marlee Matlin (who definitely deserved her Oscar). The story tells of the difficuties they face, mostly about her being deaf. Really nice camera work, some cool shots. And both lead actors were great.
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