Nine

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Nine. Relativity Media 2009.

Before watching the movie:

This week is the fifteenth anniversary of Yesterday’s Movies, and it seemed appropriate to do a special piece for that. In the past I’ve revisited the first movie reviewed here and the first movie reviewed going from twice a month to weekly. In this case though, I feel like I’m out of significant early reviews in that vicinity to revisit (though I could go back to the first review that I felt I’d figured out the format.

However, I’ve never liked non-narrative series that make the last installment a retrospective or otherwise more of a special thing about the project as a whole than another installment that can mostly stand on its own, leaving the penultimate entry as the actual last one. So even though retrospective is an easy way to fill space, I wanted to resist that urge and end Yesterday’s Movies with a normal review. But what to pick, if not a Rewind?

I’ve always felt a bit strange about the blog outlasting its moratorium. This is a fifteen year old project that’s allowed to reach back ten years. So it occurred to me to check out the movies that released around the date that Yesterday’s Movies launched. And I got lucky. The same week, a movie called Nine had its initial limited release. It’s a musical, which is a bonus, and it’s about making movies. It’s about an Italian director trying to work out what his next movie should be. And that’s about all I know about it.

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Schindler’s List

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Schindler’s List. Amblin Entertainment 1993.

Before watching the movie:

There are probably other films that I’ll remember later that are at least comparable as movies I’ve felt like I had to review at some point, but this one has always been basically the most “must-review” movie since the beginning.

I understand that this is a dramatization of a real story of a factory owner using his privilege to get Jews out of the Holocaust. It is also definitely going to be a Hollywood “The Holocaust was Bad” movie. Every movie condemning the Holocaust is to its own degree earnest and moving, but the lesson has been taught over and over and at this point it’s become a “Best Picture Oscar please” button while the West is becoming more enamored with racism and fascism anyway.

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The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

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Before watching the movie:

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. United Artists 1966

The legendary Spaghetti Westerns have always been a group I’ve meant to get to on this blog, and as the music from this one has transcended it, it’s the obvious “have to pick one” choice.

I have no idea what this movie is about, but the title suggests it’s going to explore some archetypes of good and evil, and probably there will be one character of each type listed.

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V For Vendetta

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V for Vendetta. Anarchos Productions 2006.

Before watching the movie:

When I planned this month of the greats that I kept considering and putting off, I wasn’t thinking of the timing, I just happened to have multiple films that I kept considering as springboards to political thoughts at various times of political import. But I completely failed to consider that this November could turn out to be a month of much political spilling of ink of its own accord. That said, this specific one was not in the plan, I just remembered it when I realized there were themes among some of the selections.

I suppose I know more than for a lot of movies going in. There’s a terrorist revolutionary in a mask instigating a revolution against a tyrannical government, there’s a woman brought into his world as a viewpoint character, a lot of people end up putting on the mask. And it’s based on a graphic novel.

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No Country For Old Men

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No Country For Old Men. Miramax Films 2007.

Before watching the movie:

As I announced last week at the end of the post, there’s only one more full month before I conclude this blog. I had this exit planned for months and in that time I’ve been trying to cover a lot of movies that I had always meant to get to, maybe for the entire fifteen year run. This month is for the most highly acclaimed films that I’ve come close to reviewing many times, only to decide they were too heavy to get into.

I never really absorbed much about the plot of this movie. I know Javier Bardem’s character is a monstrously cold blooded, unstoppable killer whose weapon of choice is a pneumatic cattle bolt, and I get a sense of a “dark Western” atmosphere. I suppose the title is something about how this isn’t a hospitable place for the sensibilities of the aging.

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Cloverfield

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Before watching the movie:

Cloverfield. Bad Robot 2008.

This movie had so much hype when it came out that I couldn’t avoid learning that this is a story in found footage about a Kaiju style attack on New York from the perspective of the running screaming little people on the ground who know almost nothing. I know it was so popular that a franchise was quickly spun up, which had varying success in recapturing the response.

It just never appealed to me before as a monster movie, but the cultural impact of at least the marketing around this movie is undeniable. I think this was among the first times a mainstream media release used an Alternate Reality Game to build buzz, and it definitely caught attention. I think some people were let down by the high expectations from the hype train, so that was more reason for me not to bother at the time.

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Casper

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Casper. Amblin Entertainment 1995.

Before watching the movie:

To be completely transparent, I do recall wanting to watch this movie and being in the room trying to watch it shortly after it came out. But it was a very large room with a lot of other things to do and I was very young and had a short attention span, and I don’t remember much beyond the fact that it was on the screen. I have much clearer, more recent memories, of a tie-in Pepsi commercial than I do of the movie itself. So I consider it more fair to review this as a “first time” watch than as a rewatch.

That said, this was probably my introduction to the world of Casper, though I may have seen some of the tie-in TV series. It looked so current and yet I’m sure I was also aware it was a property that had already been around.

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Psycho

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Psycho. Paramount Pictures 1960.

Before watching the movie:

I recently saw it argued that it’s impossible to see this movie the way it was intended, and that’s a pretty easy argument to make. All the big twists are pretty much the only aspects that survive in the public consciousness. The big star lead dies graphically early on and it becomes a different movie entirely. We all know the scene, and maybe we know about the casting making it more unexpected, and we know who did it and some amount of why.

I’m actually worried that with all that foreknowledge, maybe it won’t hold up. If it completely changes gear partway through, does it still all gel? Or is the purported greatness all in the shock and the music?

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Nosferatu

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Nosferatu. Prana Film 1922.

Before watching the movie:

I’ve long known that this was the Dracula movie before Dracula, and managed to get some acclaim here even if it was in German (although or perhaps because it’s silent and therefore easier to translate). I don’t know offhand how much the extreme looseness of the adaptation was for copyright reasons (which, internationally, was still extremely loose at the time anyway) and how much was localization and the contemporary constraints of how stories were told on the silent screen.

What I do know is how silly Count Orlock looks.

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The Bride of Frankenstein

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The Bride of Frankenstein. Universal Pictures 1935.

Before watching the movie:

I was never that interested in the Universal Monster Movie Universe until the last few years. They just always existed and I didn’t even learn until recently that basically every “canon” classic monster was owned by the same studio. I was particularly disinterested in the sequels and crossovers that were obviously naked cash grabs.

But much like slasher movies, I’ve come to recognize the cultural importance of these movies and feel like I have a gap without them. And not only does this one seem to have almost as much of a long shadow as the original Frankenstein movie, I’ve heard it described as when Universal’s monster movies reached a level of technical and artistic sophistication that can be said to be coming into their own. I still have a lot of gap, but I can see where the earliest movies are not quite what I think the platonic ideal of a Universal Monster Movie is.

I know there’s a new doctor making the Bride in this one. I think I read that the Monster forces him to make a partner for him, so I guess this new character is more reluctant than arrogant and maniacal.

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