Random 10: Random Films for Comment - Week 19

Miss Oyu: a good flick, it's about a widowed woman who falls in love with her sister's fiancé and suffers silently because of that. Nothing surprising there, but then again, Miyazaki hardly was a surprising director.

Oops, I mean Mizoguchi, not Miyazaki.

Bridge on the River Kwai: second best Lean film ever. One of the all time greatest endings ever. Another awesome Guinness outing.

The Blues Brothers: fun the first few times, co-opted by TBS as a "new classic" and shown way too much, though. It's not THAT great, it just gets by often on good cameos and character actors. The car chase is still epic. The Carrie Fisher plotline perhaps is a bit stale and dud.

Wow, I've only seen Blues Brothers and I really don't like that one at all.

I've never even seen The Blues Brothers.

>758. The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957 (dir. David Lean)

it's the ultimate 'scope film... and i don't think lean made a better one. brilliant use ot color and yes, the end is terrific.

"Kwai" is the kind of film that Charlton Heston thinks is "great." It's awfully middlebrow about "war is hell" without being particularly challenging. I remember all the Bill Holden sequences as being quite boring. The novel by Pierre Boulle (who also wrote the book Planet of the Apes is based on) is much more acidic and ballsy (ie, the fate of the bridge is different). My favorite Lean films are Brief Encounter, Great Expectations and the first half of Lawrence.

"Blues Brothers" is the most obvious film ever made by thousands of coke addicts. Landis can't even frame the dancers in the musical numbers, and where is the priority in cutting away from Cab Calloway doing "Minnie" to B&A crawling through tunnels?

"Carousel" is shrill and overblown like most '50s Scope adaptations of Broadway, but damn, that is a good musical. Petty crime, spousal abuse, suicide, etc. As good as Rodgers & Hammerstein get.

I liked "Jesus of Montreal" when it was first released, it's due for a rental.