100
How much of this score is based on just how influential Sunset Boulevard was for the history of cinema? Honestly, I’m not certain. Like with Casablanca or 2001: A Space Odyssey, two movies I also have at a 100, Sunset Boulevard is such a ginormous, important movie in history that it almost goes without saying that I would have something of a clouded vision of it that would make me think highly of it, maybe more so than I…
100
“And when the tiny plane landed, it sounded like my camera rewinding. I thought, this is just a picture.”
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles ends with the same sort of shot as is sprinkled throughout the film. Not with some gigantic gesture or with a sweeping musical motif, but with the camera focusing on the title character sitting at a table reflecting. She is now sitting there in devastating silence, letting the rest of the film…
100
“Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?”
It’s not worth beating around the bush on this one, folks, because by my count there’s almost nothing interesting to say about The Silence of the Lambs that hasn’t been said before. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to try, but this is by far one of the films with the biggest reputation that precedes it. For one, it’s one of the very few films that won Best Picture, Best Director, Best…
100
“At a time when digital techniques can show us almost anything, The Blair Witch Project is a reminder that what really scares us is the stuff we can’t see. The noise in the dark is almost always scarier than what makes the noise in the dark. Any kid can tell you that. Not that he believes it at the time.”
Though The Blair Witch Project isn’t quite my favorite horror movie, we still have a while to go before…
72
I am painfully aware that it’s a bit sacrilegious to say that all Martin Scorsese films are the same, and so I’ll tiptoe around that. I will say that apart from one or two I can’t say I really love any of his features. The Irishman was fine, Hugo was fine, The King of Comedy was fine, and likewise The Departed seems to be...you know, fine overall. As opposed to them all being the same, I’ll say they usually…
