#51 - CITIZEN KANE
1941; dir. Orson Welles; starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore
This is probably the most influential American film ever made. It’s also incredibly captivating and entertaining.
My last watch of this, I was particularly struck by the constructions of its long takes and, of course, its deep focus photography. Welles understands both the best ways to express filmic ideas and theatrical ideas, combining these two seemingly paradoxical modes of communication into one piece of sublimity. In his and DP Gregg Toland’s revolutionary camerawork, Welles gives his players the room to play the way they would any theatrical scene while basically inventing a new cinematic language that feels just that - “cinematic.”
Tragic, funny, sprawling, intimate - Orson Welles made a very good film, and that film is called “Citizen Kane”!
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#52 - CLEAN, SHAVEN
1993; dir. Lodge Kerrigan; starring Peter Greene, Alice Levitt, Megan Owen
This one seeped into my horror filmmaking subconscious more than I knew.
Its aesthetics are slow, minimalist, dread-inducing, and somehow threading the needle between objectivity and subjectivity. As such, you focus primarily on performance - and Greene’s performance here is fearless, egoless, pathetic, tragic, and terrifying.
One scene in this sucker is so upsetting I can barely watch it; I did that classic “peeping through my fingers” move like I was in a goddamn cartoon! Such is the raw, unvarnished yet controlled power of Lodge Kerrigan’s Clean, Shaven, a film I owe residuals to.
Put in on blu-ray, already!!
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#53 - CLUE
1985; dir. Jonathan Lynn; starring Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Michael McKean
Thanks to a gorgeous, confident 4K transfer from Shout Factory, I got to revisit a childhood favorite - and it still hits, though in different ways than my memory recalled!
For one, its first half moves slower than I remembered. My brain pitched it all at a “screwball comedy dialed to 150%” tempo, but Lynn paces the front chunk at a more reasonable clip, allowing us to melt more realistically into the characters. Then, when things do become more hurried, we’ve got a great base reality to contrast it with - and brother, that’s inspiring!
For another, it’s got a lot more social satire than I remembered - or at least, I perceive and appreciate it more now. It’s got a borderline nasty anti-authority streak, casting the powerful, poltical elite as authoritarian ding-dongs who deserve the misfortune that’s about to befall them (though it’s hard to parse whether the film’s homophobia surrounding Mr. Green is textual and satirical, or if the filmmakers just thought it was earnestly funny at the time).
It’s really nice to revisit nostalgic memories and gain a different kind of appreciation from them. A great proof of Roger Ebert’s thesis that “it's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.”
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#54 - COLLATERAL
2004; dir. Michael Mann; starring Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Jada Pinkett Smith
One of my all-timers. Filled with everything I like. So influential in everything I make.
It’s gripping and harrowing, efficient while finding bizarre, utterly human corridors to go down. The sequence constructions are unparalleled machines of unpredictable suspense, firmly reminding us how cinematically Mann (one of my GOATs) operates.
And its performances? Hoo wee. Jamie Foxx is a beautiful, relatable lead, a man full of pathos and tragedy and relatability. And Tom Cruise is goddamn terrifying. He’s giving such a smart, assured performance, turning everything we know about him into a crystallized missile of terror.
And I love that it has an ultimately optimistic ending! Stunt on ‘em, Michael!
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#55 - COLOR OF NIGHT
1994; dir. Richard Rush; starring Bruce Willis, Jane March, Rubén Blades
I love the ‘90s thriller more than most subgenres - doubly so if the thriller dives boldly into domestic boundary blurrings and psychosexual aberrations without much reckoning for good taste. So Color of Night, an infamously maligned picture that’s since gotten a critical reevaluation in the form of a Kino Lorber blu-ray, should be made for me, right?
Well, sometimes. When it locks into a certain, bravura kind of DePalma-sploitation, there are some lurid thrills and visual audacity to behold, not to mention its churlish insensitivity about neurodiversity that cascades completely into silliness.
But there is so much boring-ass shoe leather in between! And this kind of flick should never be boring. And it so often is! Maybe Rush was trying too hard to make to “ground it” or “elevate it,” grinding its pace to a halt to explain away the mechanics of its mysteries or offer reheated-Psycho-esque psychological explanations. But that’s not what I’m here for! And maybe that’s a me problem. But this is about me shelves, so:
VERDICT: GOES AWAY
Thanks for checking out Greg’s Blu-Rays A-To-Z! Next week: Haunted houses, trauma, and toxic masculinity, oh my!