#11 - THE APARTMENT
1960; dir. Billy Wilder; starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray
This is a perfect movie. Funny, so sad, unbelievably performed, ahead of its time. This delicious 4K transfer shows off sets like Lemmon’s office with unreal clarity. A deeply, deeply human film.
It’s also very important to my talented screenwriter wife Annabel Seymour and I! Well, at the time we were just dating; but she brought over a copy of The Apartment, one of her favorite movies, and she went out of her way to rent it on DVD for us to watch, because she already knew I was weird about physical media.
And now, it is one of my favorite movies, too, and it always will be.
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#12 - ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
1944; dir. Frank Capra; starring Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Josephine Hull
Loved this one as a kid, and looking back on it, I completely see why. It’s an absurd farce crossed with upsetting horror, heightening both sides of the scale. And that is literally how I would describe my interests as an artist! Sneaky lil film, this Arsenic!
At the time, it was reported Grant hated his performance, and I wonder why. I think everyone in the cast is having an absolute hoot playing to the cheap seats. Broadness on screen absolutely works if everyone commits to it, and here, it’s so refreshing and infectious. Maybe Grant was worried about his image, or the burgeoning pressures of “realism” in screen acting? If only he was still here to witness the cyclical nature of our attitudes about art!
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#13 - BABE
1995; dir. Chris Noonan; starring Christine Cavanaugh, James Cromwell, Magda Szubanski
Another childhood favorite, and one that makes me weep pretty much constantly. It’s simple and deep. It’s about contentment and expansion, the pleasures and limitations of a quiet masculinity, and using one’s individual talents to help the collective, not abandon them.
It’s about love.
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#14 - BABY DRIVER
2017; dir. Edgar Wright; starring Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Kevin Spacey
They made this custom for me, so I kinda have to like it.
Wright takes one of the pleasures of cinema, the fusion of image and sound, and heightens it to the purest form possible, even justifying it within the text. Everything is in lockstep with each other, a collation of individual elements into one big ol’ element.
It’s about as crystallized an “entertainment” as can be!
VERDICT: STAYS AND PLAYS
#15 - THE BANK JOB
2008; dir. Roger Donaldson; starring Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Richard Lintern
I love Statham so much. And I love the mid-budget, “highbrow-lowbrow” genre picture - it’s my favorite kind of movie to go to the movies by myself to.
And The Bank Job is interested in a lot of fascinating things beyond the obligatory genre stuff! Sex, class, race, the culture of the early 1970s - what lofty and cool things to poke at via genre cinema (and don’t get me started on how genre cinema is one of our best tools at poking at poky things!)!
And yet - ultimately, the medium is the message. And this medium, which I’d define as “basic construction and craft,” is dreary, mid, and in no way compelling. It can’t be all medicine!
VERDICT: GOES AWAY
Thanks for checking out Greg’s Blu-Rays A-To-Z! Next week: unusual relationships in the form of friends, lovers, and family.