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Movie Reviews: AFI’s 10 of 10, Part Two
And here we are with part two of my AFI’s 10 of 10 write-up (read part one here)—the five remaining genres, which are the decidedly darker ones: Gangster, Western, Courtroom Drama, Mystery and Epic.
Mystery
The ten: Vertigo, Chinatown, Rear Window, Laura, The Third Man, The Maltese Falcon, North By Northwest, Blue Velvet, Dial M for Murder, The Usual Suspects
Mystery Films I had seen nine out of ten prior to the Summer Movie Watch. Four of them are Hitchcocks, and you can’t watch TCM for a day without tripping over a Hitchcock. The AFI put Vertigo at the top (#1), although I would put Rear Window there for being pure unadulterated entertainment (they put it at #3). North by Northwest is also more unabashed fun than it is mind-bending or thrilling—which is not a failing, just an observation. If you’re looking for the best mystery on the list—the twistiest, cleverest, etc.—I might go Dial M for Murder (#9) or maybe Carol Reed’s The Third Man (#4). The Usual Suspects—I like it, don’t get me wrong—but it’s really a pretty standard crime film until the twist ending. I don’t feel like it has a ton of repeatability—you watch it once and are shocked, then you watch it a second time to see it in the context of knowing who Keyser Soze is. And then…you’re done. (I probably would have gone for L.A. Confidential at #10 myself.)
I don’t remember much about Laura, which I saw quite a long time ago. There was a murder, and a mistaken-identity plot, isn’t that right? I don’t remember. Chinatown was great, and I love that the mystery and murders all sort of boil down to civic disputes over water. Blue Velvet, which was the one of the ten that I watched as part of the Summer Movie Watch, was dumb. I’m not a Lynch fan anyway, but I thought that because that movie was on this list, the actual mystery would be prioritized over the weirdness. It wasn’t. I adore an investigation in a movie, and I hate when there is one, but it’s mostly ignored. The 70s were notorious for this, too, setting up a good mystery and then just cutting it off at the knees without resolving anything.
The Maltese Falcon is a bona-fide classic. Humphrey Bogart is The Man, and this is maybe his Bogartiest performance ever. (Or maybe The Big Sleep is—which also should have been on this list, by the way.) He’s a hard-boiled detective; he doesn’t laugh at danger, he just sneers and snickers at it. His partner gets shot and he shrugs, all, “I didn’t like him anyway.” He plays everybody off one another and even when he isn’t two steps ahead, he’s back on track in minutes with a rueful shake of his head. BOGEY! My favorite moment is in The Big Sleep: he’s got his gun trained on a suspect, but the suspect manages to knock it out of Bogey’s hands. It falls to the ground. Both men pause and deliberate for a split second, and then Bogey says, “Go get it.” The suspect bends down to pick up the gun and Bogey KICKS HIM IN THE HEAD. I can’t even describe how this moment fills me with delight. But again, that movie didn’t even make this list.
Movie Reviews: Crime in Our Time
One of my absolute favorites. Though it could still be called a “crime film,” it’s more accurately an investigation story, or a detective story. What’s brilliant about it is that the investigative element of the movie is the most thrilling part of it. There are a couple heart-stopping scenes of the serial killer at work, but my favorite moments in the movie are when the characters who are reporters and detectives sit around and discuss the possibilities. I love how incredibly complicated the movie was unfraid to be; it upsets what we have come to believe is the natural order of things (the CSI way, you might call it) in which the investigation takes a single, direct path and ends conclusively with an arrest. The real-life crimes of the Zodiac killer occurred all over the state of California, in multiple jurisdictions, and the movie dramatizes the difficulties of sharing information and case files in a pre-digital world. In just over two hours of run time the movie also zeroes in on at least three different suspects, convincing the audience that this time they’ve definitely got their man, only to scrap everything—not necessarily because they’ve proved someone innocent, but just because the evidence is inadequate. Finally—and this is seriously a narrative accomplishment—despite the fact that no one has ever been prosecuted for the murder, the movie manages to close its story out in a satisfactory way. It feels closed. It has incredible period music (“Hurdy Gurdy Man”!), dynamic direction by David Fincher, and some unexpected humor mostly courtesy of Robert Downey Jr. Also stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo, and about a billion “Hey, it’s that guy”s.
I really think this movie would have made more of an impression on me if I had seen it when it first came out (before The Departed, instead of after). Doesn’t it seem that Scorsese was repeating himself just a little bit? You’ve got Daniel Day-Lewis playing the Jack Nicholson role, Leonardo DiCaprio playing the Leonardo DiCaprio role, Cameron Diaz pointlessly playing the pointless Vera Farmiga role. You’ve got the mole plot, the young man who engages in a mentorship with someone he intends ultimately to take down. The woman who is only there to sleep with both of them and complicate things. I love The Departed, frankly, and it’s too bad for Gangs of New York that I didn’t see it first, because I might have loved Gangs instead.
What I did really like about this is the historical angle: the immigrant life, the warring factions all trying to build a society out of lawlessness and gain power out of poverty. The opening fight scene was pretty incredible, as were the sets, like the underground catacombs where the Irishmen hung out and plotted. And Daniel Day-Lewis is pretty much always a barn-burner, preferable even (dare I say it?) to Nicholson. Also, the closing shot (which time-lapses into present-day New York) is amazing.
Cultural Civilian 