#249: Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

Quick side note: I realized that I pretty much gave away the entire film in my discussion of Sleuth, so from here on out I’m going to try to write my posts in such a way that I don’t ruin the movies for any of you who haven’t seen them yet. So from this post on, the spoilers will be kept to a minimum, aside from really obvious things. Like I’m pretty sure we all know how Titanic ended, even if you never saw it.

And now onto #249…

Current Top 250 Ranking: n/a

Starring: Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Maribel Verdú

Seen It Before?: No

I just finished watching Y Tu Mamá También (2001), and I feel a bit stunned. But not in the “that was such a good movie!” way I felt after finishing Sleuth. This is more of a mentally stunned “wow…” sort of feeling.

As I was watching the movie, there were initially a couple things that I found bothering me. Every time the sound of the film is muted so that the narrator can speak, there is a pause just long enough to feel awkward before he starts talking. It took me the entire movie to get used to that pause. The other thing that bothered me was that I felt that there didn’t seem to be enough motivation or explanation to Luisa’s character to merit her behavior. The incredibly forward way in which she spoke about sex wasn’t totally unreasonable. Her decision to leave her cheating husband with no intention of even leaving a note, let alone ever returning, wasn’t so implausible. Her selfish sexual nature could be real too. But in putting together all the pieces of Luisa, she didn’t add up. To me, there was something keeping me from finding her character realistic and believable. But I got my answer in the end. The ending, where we learn what has become of the characters following the road trip that makes up the majority of the film, is of a greatly different tone than the rest of the film. It grounds their fantastic journey in a realism it was on the verge of lacking at times, and the “hindsight is 20/20” philosophy becomes very apropos. And the ending hits you like those awkward pauses preceding the narration, while simultaneously explaining them. They were foreshadowing I suppose. Preparing me for the unexpected feeling I was to receive at the end.

Oh and speaking of the unexpected, I spent a decent portion of the movie trying to figure out what the title was supposed to mean. It turns out that it’s a line in the film itself. I won’t tell you who says it or when.

If I had to pick just a few words to describe this movie, I would go with: sad, erotic, and deep. Erotic and deep almost seem like they should be mutually exclusive, and in a good bit of the movie, they each do exist without the other. One isn’t thinking too deeply or philosophically when watching Tenoch have sex with his girlfriend. (Parts of this movie are truly like something out of Kids (1985).) Conversely, one certainly is not thinking of sex during the trio’s road trip when the narrator sends us on side stories about long-forgotten home towns and fatal car accidents. But erotic and deep both come to describe the relationship between Luisa, Tenoch and Julio by the end of the movie, in both expected and rather unexpected ways. And as for the third adjective, sad, I did not expect the entire ending of this movie to be the way it was. It is disappointing and unfortunate, but at the same time very real. Which strangely enough, again reminds me of Kids, because the very end of the ridiculously-sexual Kids presents something of a serious wake-up call just as Y Tu Mamá También makes us step back from the sexualized road trip to really think about life for a moment.

Last of all I just have to say how much I enjoyed the characters in this movie. Luisa is hurting but strong, and dynamic and fun. And Tenoch and Julio both really are caring and well-intentioned, with a little daring, irrationality and hormones getting in their own way. Put the kids to bed before you watch this one.

#250: Sleuth (1972)

Current Top 250 Ranking: #210

Starring: Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine

Seen It Before?: No

Just my luck. Right off the bat, I get assigned a movie that’s out of print. But thankfully, I was able to find it available for download online. A pirate’s life for me! Problem solved.

First of all, I have to say that I absolutely loved this movie! In my (albeit limited) experience, one cannot go wrong with Michael Caine, so that was an instant plus. To my knowledge, I’ve never seen a Laurence Olivier film before, so I didn’t know quite what to expect there, although his reputation obviously precedes him.

I sensed right from the opening credits that I was going to like this movie. The credits run over images that simultaneously made me think of puppet theaters and the credits to Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events (2004). Suffice it to say, I was intrigued. And when the credit came up for Cole Porter’s song “Anything Goes”, I knew I’d be waiting impatiently for the part of the movie where the song came into play. (I so love that song that I find it disappointing that it is gotten out of the way so quickly in the beginnings of both Anything Goes (1956) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984).) Speaking of music, throughout Sleuth I found myself reminded of Clue (1985), enough so that I wonder if whoever composed the score for Clue was familiar with Sleuth and intended to pay homage, because the similarity really is striking. The difference is that in Sleuth the score gives genuine suspicious and imploratory tones, while Clue is campy and self-parodic. For my part, I conclude that the musical similarity was intentional. It seems that it would make sense. A murder mystery about people together in a mansion, paying homage to a murder mystery about people together in a mansion. Not too much of a stretch.

In addition to the score, I loved the setting right away. A large isolated mansion, complete with unnecessary hedge maze. It was The Shining (1980) meets Hammer Film Productions, and it was perfect. Equally perfect was the fact that Caine and Olivier make up the entire cast. Now we have Clue meets The Shining/Hammer meets And Then There Were None meets Hitchcock. Excellent! The circumstance of the isolated location is possibly my favorite of all possible film settings. I am certain to mention this again when I get to Rear Window (1954) and 12 Angry Men (1957), but I believe that while a cast of 30 and numerous sound stages can make for an exceptional film, I find it more impressive when the writer/director/producer creates something great out using an extremely constricted cast and setting. Twelve jurors in a room for 90 minutes obviously has the potential to be terribly dull, but 12 Angry Men is anything but. Likewise, two men in a house together for two hours? That could be awful, but Sleuth is certainly not.

I have to reiterate how perfect the setting is. The mise en scène here is unlike anything I’ve seen in any other movie. Andrew Wyke (Olivier)’s house is so uniquely bizarre. The board games and creepy mechanical musical figures that litter the main room give you a very clear picture of how unusual the character of Andrew Wyke is. Some of them, especially the laughing sailor, because secondary characters in the film themselves. There isn’t a living soul in the film besides Caine and Olivier, but as the camera continually cuts to the toys and dolls around the room, you start to expect them to move or join in on the conversation. You begin to sense that the quick shots of the china doll or bust of a dark-skinned man or portrait of the elusive Mrs. Marguerite Wyke are serving as commentary. There are eerily unspoken emotions and reactions to the plot found emanating from Wyke’s ensemble of inanimate housemates.

Speaking of plot, the story in this film is great because it takes unexpected turns. You discover pretty quickly that the relationship between Andrew Wyke and Milo Tindle (Caine) is going to be witty, dynamic and full of surprises, and neither of them disappoint from beginning to end. One of my favorites scenes has to be when they are essentially playing dress-up together in the basement. You forget for a moment that you are watching a husband and his wife’s “other man” interact, and feel like you are watching siblings at play. And to top it off, Michael Caine in full vaudevillian clown gear is extremely funny. The glimpse of whimsy the two actors give us here, in the midst of a tale with an ultimately sobering tone, is a joy to be audience to.

Andrew Wyke turns out overall to seem very nearly manic-depressive in his personality, and more often than not tending toward the manic end of things, and Olivier plays it wonderfully. And of course Michael Caine is perfect as Milo Tindle, Mrs. Wyke’s lover. Caine is wholly believable as the impassioned half-“dago” lover. He is convincing from the get-go, but Caine extinguishes any doubt about 40 minutes in, during the scene when Wyke is about to throw his wife’s lingerie around her bedroom. Tindle stands in the middle of the room, and as Wyke speaks, a mischievously sensuous yet angered look is clear in Tindle’s eyes.

Wyke: “The mistress’s bedroom. Or would you know your way about?”

Tindle: “The mistress? …Or her bedroom?”

Simply perrrrfect.

So moving on, I hesitate to use the word “problem”, but one issue with Caine being cast as Tindle is that willing suspension of disbelief on the audience’s part becomes very key in the second half of the film when “Inspector Doppler” shows up at Wyke’s house. Because let’s face it, makeup and padding and a wig and colored contacts or not, Caine’s voice and accent are impossible to effectively disguise. But that aside, the twist in the plot that occurs here is fabulous and fun to watch.

And in the end, following the manic cacophonous din that we watch Wyke drown in, there is a definite satisfaction in seeing the story end like one of Wyke’s detective mysteries, both in situation and by way of viewing the closing shot melt into one of the puppet theater set-ups from the opening credits.

I am so glad that this film was not #251, or I would have missed out on a real gem. What a fantastic way to start my odyssey…

250: A Film (Review) Odyssey

This is exactly what it sounds like.  A journey through 250 films.  The IMDb Top 250, to be precise.

I’ve been a movie fan for as long as I can remember, but to this day there are so many must-sees that I haven’t seen yet. So I got to thinking. As an English major who loves to read, I would find nerdy enjoyment in acquiring the syllabi for my lit classes. There it always was — the new list of often unfamiliar novels I was tasked with reading over the next few months. This is how I ended up reading books like Brave New World and Jane Eyre. Works I may never have gotten around to, if left to my own devices. But I was told to read them, and did so, and ended up loving them.

So why not give myself a similar set of circumstances, but with films instead of books?

And so it has come to be that my new syllabus is the IMDb Top 250 list.

But therein lies a problem, of which anyone familiar with IMDb may already know.  The Top 250 list, as far as I can tell, is supposed to show what the 250 all-time most highly rated films are, amongst the wide sea of IMDb users. It is the “all-time” that comes into question here. Some of you may even be familiar with the day when The Dark Knight (2008) hit the #1 spot on the Top 250 list. How could the new Batman epic dethrone widely regarded classics like The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather? Quite simply, it was a new movie that took the public by storm, and everyone and their grandmother voted it up on IMDb.com, temporarily affording it the #1 spot.

This phenomenon, in my eyes, has become truly problematic.  Tonight, in the late hours of June 20th 2010, I scan the current Top 250 and see what I believe to be too many films with release years beginning with “200-“. Haven’t films as we know them been around for something like a century? What makes the last ten and a half years so remarkable? I’d say nothing, assuming we are not giving films merit based solely upon the caliber of their computer generated imagery. I wish for the  majority of the films I am to review to have been considered gold standards for years, not months. Given this, I am attempting to somewhat limit the problem by using a Top 250 list from several years ago, when (one hopes) this issue was running less rampant. So without further ado, the list…

The IMDb Top 250 from March 1st, 2003 :

1. The Godfather (1972)
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
3. The Godfather: Part II (1974)
4. Schindler’s List (1993)
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
6. Casablanca (1942)
7. Citizen Kane (1941)
8. Shichinin no samurai [Seven Samurai] (1954)
9. Star Wars (1977)
10. Memento (2000)
11. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
12. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
13. Rear Window (1954)
14. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
15. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
16. The Usual Suspects (1995)
17. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
18. Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)
19. North By Northwest (1959)
20. Pulp Fiction (1994)
21. Psycho (1960)
22. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
23. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
24. Twelve Angry Men (1957)
25. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
26. American Beauty (1999)
27. Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo [The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly] (1966)
28. Goodfellas (1990)
29. Vertigo (1958)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979)
31. Sunset Blvd (1950)
32. Some Like It Hot (1959)
33. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
34. The Matrix (1999)
35. Taxi Driver (1976)
36. The Third Man (1949)
37. Paths of Glory (1957)
38. Das Boot (1981)
39. Fight Club (1999)
40. L.A. Confidential (1997)
41. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
42. Chinatown (1974)
43. Double Indemnity (1944)
44. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
45. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
46. Singin’ In The Rain (1942)
47. Saving Private Ryan (1994)
48. M (1931)
49. All About Eve (1950)
50. Raging Bull (1980)
51. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
52. Wo hu cang long [Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon] (2000)
53. C’era una volta il West [Once Upon a Time In The West] (1968)
54. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
55. Se7en (1995)
56. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
57. La vita è bella [Life is Beautiful] (1997)
58. American History X (1998)
59. Touch of Evil (1958)
60. The Sting (1973)
61. Alien (1979)
62. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
63. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
64. Rashomon (1950)
65. Annie Hall (1977)
66. Léon (1994)
67. The Great Escape (1963)
68. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
69. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
70. The Sixth Sense (1999)
71. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
72. The Pianist (2002)
73. Jaws (1975)
74. Amadeus (1984)
75. Braveheart (1995)
76. Toy Story 2 (1999)
77. Blade Runner (1982)
78. Ran [Revolt] (1985)
79. On The Waterfront (1954)
80. Fargo (1996)
81. High Noon (1952)
82. The Apartment (1960)
83. Modern Times (1936)
84. Aliens (1986)
85. Strangers on a Train (1951)
86. Duck Soup (1933)
87. The Shining (1980)
88. The Princess Bride (1987)
89. Lola Rennt [Run Lola Run] (1998)
90. Donnie Darko (2001)
91. City Lights (1931)
92. The General (1927)
93. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi [Spirited Away] (2001)
94. The Searchers (1956)
95. Metropolis (1927)
96. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
97. The Big Sleep (1946)
98. Notorious (1946)
99. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
100. The Graduate (1967)
101. Manhattan (1979)
102. The Deer Hunter (1978)
103. Rebecca (1940)
104. Glory (1989)
105. Shrek (2001)
106. The Great Dictator (1940)
107. The African Queen (1951)
108. Det Sjunde inseglet [The Seventh Seal] (1957)
109. The Green Mile (1999)
110. Ladri di biciclette [Bicycle Thieves] (1948)
111. Patton (1970)
112. Nuovo cinema Paradiso [Cinema Paradiso] (1988)
113. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
114. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
115. Ben-Hur (1959)
116. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
117. It Happened One Night (1934)
118. The Straight Story (1999)
119. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
120. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
121. Yojimbo (1961)
122. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
123. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)
124. Almost Famous (2000)
125. The Wild Bunch (1969)
126. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
127. Mononoke Hime [Princess Mononoke] (1997)
128. Forrest Gump (1994)
129. A Christmas Story (1983)
130. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
131. Unforgiven (1992)
132. Monsters Inc (2001)
133. Young Frankenstein (1973)
134. Being John Malkovich (1999)
135. Gone With The Wind (1939)
136. Stalag 17 (1953)
137. Mulholland Dr (1997)
138. The Conversation (1974)
139. La Grande Illusion [The Grand Illusion] (1937)
140. The Insider (1999)
141. All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
142. The Hustler (1961)
143. Festen [The Celebration] (1998)
144. Gladiator (2000)
145. Die Hard (1988)
146. His Girl Friday (1940)
147. The Elephant Man (1980)
148. Platoon (1986)
149. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
150. Spartacus (1960)
151. Once Upon a Time In America (1984)
152. Bronenosets Potyomkin [Battleship Potemkin] (1925)
153. Magnolia (1999)
154. Back To The Future (1985)
155. The Gold Rush (1925)
156. Sling Blade (1996)
157. Toy Story (1995)
158. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
159. Charade (1963)
160. Brazil (1985)
161. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
162. The Exorcist (1973)
163. Life of Brian (1979)
164. The Others (2001)
165. Minority Report (2002)
166. A Night at the Opera (1935)
167. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
168. Traffic (2000)
169. All The President’s Men (1976)
170. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
171. Witness For The Prosecution (1957)
172. Amores Perros [Love’s a Bitch](2000)
173. The Right Stuff (1983)
174. The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
175. Les Quatre Cents Coups [The 400 Blows] (1959)
176. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
177. Stand By Me (1986)
178. The Killing (1956)
179. The Terminator (1984)
180. Hable con ella [Talk to Her] (2002)
181. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
182. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
183. Roman Holiday (1953)
184. Trois couleurs: Rouge [Three Colors: Red] (1994)
185. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
186. Harvey (1950)
187. The Lion in Winter (1968)
188. Ed Wood (1994)
189. Smultronstället [Wild Strawberries] (1957)
190. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
191. Trainspotting (1996)
192. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
193. Gandhi (1982)
194. Rain Man (1988)
195. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
196. Todo sobre mi madre [All About My Mother] (1999)
197. This is Spinal Tap (1984)
198. Network (1976)
199. Henry V (1989)
200. Laura (1944)
201. Snatch (2000)
202. Stagecoach (1939)
203. To Be or Not to Be (1942)
204. Die xue shuang xiong [The Killer] (1989)
205. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
206. Miller’s Crossing (1990)
207. The 39 Steps (1935)
208. Groundhog Day (1993)
209. King Kong (1933)
210. La Strada [The Road] (1954)
211. Cicade de Deus [City of God] (2002)
212. The Untouchables (1987)
213. The Iron Giant (1999)
214. Good Will Hunting (1997)
215. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
216. Road to Perdition (2002)
217. MASH (1970)
218. Fantasia (1940)
219. E.T. the Extra-Terrestial (1982)
220. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
221. Clerks (1994)
222. Moulin Rouge! (2001)
223. 8 1/2 (1963)
224. Planet of the Apes (1968)
225. Being There (1979)
226. Rio Bravo (1959)
227. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
228. The Quiet Man (1952)
229. Deliverance (1972)
230. In The Heat of The Night (1967)
231. Ghost World (2001)
232. From Here To Eternity (1953)
233. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
234. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
235. Red River (1948)
236. The Thin Man (1934)
237. Chicago (2002)
238. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
239. The Birds (1963)
240. Jean de Florette (1986)
241. You Can Count on Me (2000)
242. The Big Lebowski (1998)
243. A Man for All Seasons (1966)
244. The French Connection (1971)
245. The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
246. The Player (1992)
247. Heat (1995)
248. The Killing Fields (1984)
249. Y tu mamá también [And Your Mother Too] (2001)
250. Sleuth (1972)

This list was taken from http://www.timo-schreiter.de/imdb/all_top250_titles.php

As of today there are 75 titles on the Top 250 list now that were not on the list in March 2003, the majority of which have post-2000 release years. And of course it goes without saying (although I’m saying it anyway) that those 75 mostly-newer movies bump 75 mostly-older movies off the above list that I will be using as gospel from here on out. This is essentially what I was hoping for: a list that is representative of what were considered great films before the 21st century’s showing had fully infiltrated.

Also it should be noted that I am going to be counting backwards, in the spirit of “saving the best for last”.

I’ve only seen about 70 of these movies before, so this should be quite an informative  (and extensive) adventure.

Coming soon: #250!