A Movie-Hater Watches Best Pictures (part 3)

And so my torment continues. I am poor Gregor Samsa, imprisoned within a rigid carapace of cinema, trapped on my back and thrashing my little beetle legs in despair and indignation as Hollywood lobs apples at my soft underbelly. I don’t want to increase my film literacy!!! I wanna make beautiful women get married to each other in the Sims 4 and listen to music set to the McDonald’s french fry timer jingle while dissociating! But alas, I committed to this series, and I must continue, even though as I make my way through our cinematic history and the technology improves, the odds of me seeing realistic blood gets ever higher.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

These are actually starting to feel like real movies now??? I have a BA in Asian Studies and my senior capstone course was on the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia during their little Pan-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere jaunt, so I’ve been very familiar with the concept of this film, but I never watched it because if there was any takeaway from that course, it’s that Southeast Asia was not a fun place to be in WWII. Anyway, Sessue Hayakawa’s Japanese is so hard for me to understand that I had to look up where he was from to see if he was speaking with a regional dialect, but he’s from Chiba??? Is this the Japanese version of a Transatlantic accent???? I also really hate that these movies always have some subplot or whatever about the white dudes pairing up with hot local singles who don’t speak or have personalities. However, the scene with the bats was good, and I liked the ending a lot.

Gigi (1958)

Everything I know about Colette’s work comes from the 2018 Keira Knightley movie which I only watched because it’s gay, and that’s still sort of my only takeaway. Is the book gayer than this? This movie was fine, the plot was whatever, I hated the romance, but I loved the sets so much that I’m about to leave everything behind to become a turn-of-the-century French courtesan.

Ben-Hur (1959)

I’m deciding it now, movies aren’t allowed to be almost 4 hours long unless they’re The Lord of the Rings. Anyway, Christianity is very fascinating to me, it’s almost alien, and I’m just like, aren’t these guys embarrassed? If I were a white guy and I was playing Jesus in a serious big budget movie, I’d be soooooo embarrassed.

The Apartment (1960)

Nothing hits harder than a mundane rom-com where the stakes are low, the characters are normal people, and the circumstances are relatively ordinary (as ordinary as a single man renting a spacious one bedroom apartment a block from Central Park for less than a quarter of his monthly entry-level salary can be.) Like what I supposed to do with this other than lie on the floor and cry about my own life?

West Side Story (1960)

I love it when musicals tackle traditionally masculine topics such as gangs, because the whole gender role facade falls apart once you give it a traditionally feminine spin (dance pun intended.) Anyway, the blond hair dye and brownface psychologically hurt me, but it’s a good musical and the music is good so tbh it didn’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting to be enjoyable. However, I still stand by it being a very bad adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and also it doesn’t really seem to understand a lot of its own subtext.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

I do like it when movies start off with just like five solid minutes of music, like yesss queen, acclimate my ear to the score, introduce those leitmotifs, but also like… when a film is almost four hours long (we JUST went over this), I think you could probably skip that part. Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot, even though I had to break it up into two days otherwise I would have perished, and I’m sure the postcolonial critics have had a lot to say.

Tom Jones (1963)

After all of these very serious movies and big sweeping epics, I suppose it’s nice to see one that is allowed to be silly and dumb, but also it would have been nice too if that movie were also good???? Maybe I would have liked it more if the subtitles had worked on my stream and I’d have been able to actually understand what anyone was saying (I have audio processing issues and I’m hard of hearing) but idk probably not.

My Fair Lady (1964)

I’m of the camp that Julie Andrews should have been Eliza, and I’m not just saying that because this is one of my least favorite Audrey Hepburn performances. Also, I really hate that this movie is largely just accepted as a romance between between Eliza and Higgins. Like, Higgins — pushing sixty and terribly judgmental and condescendingly paternalistic — is always painted as Eliza’s true love interest, but there’s also a running theme of father/parental figures through the story that I feel fits more in what Shaw has been quoted saying. I see how you could view it as more of a more straightforward romcom with an ambiguous ending, but I think you can also just as easily view it as something a little deeper and more Shaw’s style, so once I let go of the whole “ugh why do they keep pairing Audrey Hepburn with the babies of the old folks” thing, I enjoyed it a lot more.

The Sound of Music (1965)

I’ve been seeing some conversation around the trend of literalism in music (I see you, Caroline Polachek) and how that applies to other forms of art, and one person on Tiktok was discussing it in regards to modern musical theater, this sort of cultural eschewing or dismissal of abstraction, lyricism, and poetry . I don’t know, I’m not involved in the musical community, I lowkey cannot stand plays and other stage productions, so I don’t know how true it is across the board, but it was on my mind while watching this movie. I don’t know, there’s a playfulness, a musicality, and a poetic beauty to a lot of the songs in this musical, and I think that’s what makes it so impactful. Like many Americans, I grew up with this movie and it’s probably the Best Picture winner I’ve seen the most times, so it’s a little difficult to focus a critical eye past the nostalgia, but I don’t know, I’ve seen this so many times and it still never fails to capture my attention, in large part due to the music itself. (Also I was in love with Julie Andrews when I was four and I’m in love with her now.)

A Man for All Seasons (1966)

How did anyone remember their lines, this whole movie is just lengthy conversation seasons about religion and law and politics and I had no idea what anyone was talking about because I’m a dirty heathen and also a moron, but it was compelling anyway. Also, I loved the directorial decision to include a lot of emphasis on boat travel in Tudor England, like I don’t think we as Western society talk enough about rivers and I’m glad they got some representation finally.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

I’m sorry to say, but ACAB even for Sidney Poitier. I do think it’s a shame that murders and other crimes have to be solved by cops because the art and science of investigation is very interesting and important, and it just sucks that it’s in the hands of such a fundamentally broken system and culture. It’s also made it impossible for me to fully enjoy crime/cop media, even when it’s well-acted and trying very hard to be mindful and thoughtful.

Oliver! (1968)

I have a very distinct childhood memory of being at a family friend’s house for dinner, which was an incredibly nerve-wracking experience to begin with, as I was a shy and anxious child. When I finally summoned the courage to politely ask if I could have some more food, the mom immediately launched into her best Oliver Twist impersonation, echoing me with a little British accent and a “please sir” and it was so shocking to be mocked out of the blue for an innocent question that I still think about it 20+ years later. Anyway, that’s my Oliver Twist trauma. Also, I find it so so so funny that they made a sort of peppy, cartoonish, family-friendly musical out of a text that was meant to satirize and draw unromantic attention to the living conditions of real children and people under capitalistic industrialization. Like, the music is great and everything, but it’s just so twee and sanitized. Emile Zola would have also hated this one.