Tag: 2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey – An Unusual Epic

Watching that opening, rarely is something so grandiose, so unironically epic, and something that has been lampooned and parodied to death still capable of conjuring up feelings of magnificence. “2001: A Space Odyssey” is one of the few movies remaining with this unspeakable power in cinema.  People may argue about their favorite Stanley Kubrick films, but there are few that so fully demonstrate his mastery in just a few moments.

“2001” left so many audiences in 1968 floored. It was a movie unlike anything anyone had ever seen and perhaps still is. Upon watching the film for the third time, “2001” in many ways is decidedly not what one would associate with a modern epic, or even an Old Hollywood epic. Its images have scope and size, but how much of the film earns its resonance in the way even Kubrick copycats have conditioned us to expect today?

The opening goes against the grain completely. Kubrick shows us empty, still images that let us know this is Earth, but not an Earth we know. Apes appear and interact at the Dawn of Man, and the traces of humanity we see are the first hints of fear, boredom, curiosity and most terrifyingly of all, aggression.

When the music cues again, it doesn’t invoke melodrama but that of discovery, violence, genius and evolution. If Kubrick knew anything it was that these themes needed to be portrayed on as large of a canvas as possible if they were to mean anything. Continue reading “2001: A Space Odyssey – An Unusual Epic”

My Best (and Favorite) Movies of All Time

These are my 10 “Best” movies of all time, along with my 10 “Favorite” movies ever.

Any critic voting in the Sight and Sound poll that was announced yesterday (my coverage here if you care to compare lists) will tell you how impossibly difficult it is to select 10 films as the best of all time. Occurring every 10 years since 1952, this is really the only list that matters. They have to select with their minds and their hearts, and the two don’t always coincide. If you’ve seen all the masterpieces, how do you choose between all that is perfect? And how would you like to be the critic who finally displaced “Citizen Kane” as the best movie of all time?

I don’t have nearly as much pressure on my head (not yet), but it hasn’t stopped some of my friends from asking what are my all time favorites.

I tend to dodge the question (often pretentiously, I might add). “Well, how do you rank works of art anyway?” “Oh, you probably haven’t heard of them.” “I’ve just seen so much that it’s so hard to choose.” And then I’ll say something about how I’ve seen the Harry Potter movies a lot because they’re always on HBO and I have a sister with no qualms of re-watching stuff, so maybe those could be called some of my “favorites.”

Often, I don’t even like the word “favorite.” “Best” and “favorite” usually go hand in hand. If I called “Drive” the best movie of 2011, it’s because it’s the one I most want to see again AND because it’s the most important/best made/critic-y jargon bullshit.

There’s also the possibility that I just haven’t seen enough films. In fact, I know I haven’t seen enough. One day decades from now when my Excel spreadsheet of classic films to watch is completely marked up with yellow highlights, when I’ve written and read all I can about them and am looking back on my entire life of watching movies as opposed to looking forward to what’s coming out this Friday, then maybe I’ll make a decent list.

So for all those reasons and more, I’ve never officially made public what are my all time picks for best movies ever. I’ve always had titles in mind, but they’ve never been put on paper like this. It’s damned hard to do.

But I’ll concede that in this instant, “best” does not mean “favorite.” I’m not going to lie and pretend that some obscure foreign movie I’ve seen once two years ago means more to me than something I’ve seen dozens of times since I was a kid. At the same time, that movie I know by heart is probably not even in the same conversation technically or historically as that obscure foreign film.

It’s why I’ve decided to provide TWO lists. One has the movies I would call the most powerful and most significant movies ever made. The other has the titles that I could never forget. They define me as a critic and a person. Continue reading “My Best (and Favorite) Movies of All Time”

2012 Sight and Sound Poll Announced

“Vertigo” has now been named the #1 film over “Citizen Kane” in the 2012 Sight and Sound Critics’ Poll.

For 50 years, “Citizen Kane” has sat alone as the greatest film of all time, much like its title character locked away in a giant palace, untouched.

Now, a giant has toppled.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” has bested “Citizen Kane” as the number one film ever made in the Sight and Sound Poll, a list organized by Sight and Sound magazine and voted on by critics and writers from around the world.

Roger Ebert calls the list essentially the only film poll that matters, and it is such because it has been conducted every 10 years since 1952 and surveys the best of the best in film.

Citizen Kane has been number 1 since 1962 when it overcame Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” the reigning champ from 10 years prior. Since then, “Vertigo” has been on every list since 1972, climbing to as high as number 2 in 2002. This year, “Vertigo” received 191 votes from its 847 participants, dwarfing “Kane’s” 151.

This year’s full list is as follows.

  1. “Vertigo” – Alfred Hitchcock, 1958
  2. “Citizen Kane” – Orson Welles, 1941
  3. “Tokyo Story” – Yasujiro Ozu, 1953
  4. “The Rules of the Game” – Jean Renoir, 1939
  5. “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” – F.W. Murnau, 1927
  6. “2001: A Space Odyssey” – Stanley Kubrick, 1968
  7. “The Searchers” – John Ford, 1956
  8. “Man With a Movie Camera” – Dziga Vertov, 1929
  9. “The Passion of Joan of Arc” – Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1927
  10. “8 1/2” – Federico Fellini, 1963 Continue reading “2012 Sight and Sound Poll Announced”

Solaris (1972)

The introduction was given by IU President Michael McRobbie. He’s a bit of a celebrity and authority figure on campus, so it was a bit of a surprise and a treat to hear him introduce “Solaris.”

But the real reason it was a surprise is because “Solaris” is not a movie you select lightly. If you have seen it, it is likely not the only movie you’ve seen like it. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, no director ever demanded more of our patience and few films were as challenging and obtuse as his.

“Solaris” was considered the Russian answer to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a valid comparison given their proximity, their “plots,” their story telling, their breathtaking, other worldly visuals and their enormous themes. But as McRobbie spoke about the film for roughly 10 minutes, he compared Tarkovsky more to Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni than Kubrick.

I said to myself, here is a man who knows his movies. Continue reading “Solaris (1972)”