Our second month of attempting to tackle the 100 (more or less) films on my 100 Movies Bucket List poster yielded some pretty high highs and some very low lows. Specifically, this batch contains both the first perfect five-out-of-five and the lowest score I am willing to give to a movie. Just over half of the movies were new watches for me, while four of them I had seen before, despite not having very memorable thoughts about them. As of the end of February, 18 movies have been checked off the list.
Click here to see the Letterboxd list of films.
The Pianist – dir. Roman Polanski
The true story of a Polish musician struggling to survive in the ghetto of World War II Warsaw. Somehow this one fell through the cracks for me when it initially came out. I only really ever saw the poster and I’m not quite sure how I got the impression of this being a romance film. Boy was I wrong! Instead, what I got was one of the most brutal and emotionally moving Holocaust dramas I imagine exists. Despite its very bleak and dour tone, I was glued to this movie for its entire 150 minute running time (although I had to watch this in two parts). Highly recommended for anyone like me who completely passed this one up. 4.5/5
Spy Game – dir. Tony Scott
An aging CIA agent is called into action to negotiate the retrieval of one of his proteges. Another movie that had completely gone under my radar was this political thriller starring Robert Redford and his new-age doppelganger Brad Pitt. Unlike The Pianist I think this one went unnoticed for so long for pretty good reason. While it’s not quite inspired by the early-2000s War on Terror, the film really strikes the vibe of something inspired by both it and the United State’s foreign diplomacy in the 1990s. That is to say that most of its themes are well worn in 2021, leaving this story feeling rather flat and completely uninteresting to me. 2/5
Taxi Driver – dir. Martin Scorsese
A disillusioned and violent war veteran schemes to free his city from perceived sleaze and chaos. Taxi Driver is another film that I originally and most recently watched probably close to a decade ago, in my more impressionable (relative) youth. I think many people, my younger self included, tend to see Travis Bickle as a tragic anti-hero turned sour by a cruel and unforgiving world. Upon re-watching the film, I really have little sympathy for his brooding and sociopathic ways, even if his particular brand of street justice fall more into the grey of the good/bad guy spectrum. I think the complexity of his character that leads many to misinterpret the message of the film also acts as the film’s strongest selling point. 4/5
A Few Good Men – dir. Rob Reiner
A cocky but also unambitious military lawyer uncovers clandestine punishment rituals after the death of a soldier on a military base. This is exactly the kind of golden nugget that was hoping to find while mining the depths of this Bucket List movie poster project. This relatively simple and small-scale courtroom drama completely took me by surprise and blew my socks off. Performances across the board from Tom Cruise and Demi Moore to Kevin Bacon and Jack Nicholson were out-of-the-park home runs. It didn’t hurt that Aaron Sorkin was 100% in his wheelhouse writing a film like this. 4.5/5
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – dir. Michel Gondry
A man enlists in a procedure to have memories concerning an ex-girlfriend erased from his mind. This was another film I watched just out of high school and without any significant relationships to relate to, kind of let this one just roll off me. This time around I was astonished by how dense Charlie Kaufman’s overlapping story arcs are and how Gondry’s visuals compliment their frenetic and whimsical energy. I’m quite sure it set off the wave of the modern-day manic pixie dream girl romantic dramedy but I don’t think any have yet done it this well. 4/5
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – dir. Tomas Alfredson
A retired MI6 agent is called back into action to uncover a mole among his former associates against the backdrop of Cold War Europe. Probably somewhere in my top 20 films of all time, I always admired this one for how uninterested it was in holding the viewer’s hand navigating a very convoluted plot. Instead it demands that you really pay attention to the details to keep yourself oriented throughout the multiple story- and time-lines. Even if the acting isn’t anything to really write home about, the direction and coordination of everything else going on was more than enough to hold my attention. 4.5/5
The Bridges of Madison County – dir. Clint Eastwood
A housewife begins an affair with a dirty old man. I thought Crash was going to end up being the loser of this list when all was said and done, but then along came Meryl and Clint. I’m probably a tad bit biased because nothing about this movie appeals to me in the slightest, but I found it as one of the least substantive romances I can fathom. To me, it’s simply a story of how a brief stint of infidelity nearly changed a woman’s life but ultimately amounts to nothing except a huge “what if?” question. The entirety of the plot could probably be summed up in two sentences or less. 0.5/5
Green Book – dir. Peter Farrelly
An out-of-work bouncer is hired to drive an African American musician on tour in 1960s southern America. I think this one caught a bit of flack for being a minority-centric story told from the perspective of a white man that somehow inexplicably took home Best Picture at the Academy Awards amidst a time of mass racial introspection. It’s not a horrible movie by any means, and I’d actually argue that it’s perfectly entertaining, but it doesn’t quite live up to an award like that. At best it’s a movie that many white suburban moms are going to watch and think they’ve been cured of racism. 3/5
City of God – dir. Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund
A coming-of-age tale about a group of Brazilian youths straying down different life paths in Rio de Janeiro. I think I first watched this one in high school, and while I vaguely remember enjoying it, I had no idea what I was in for with my rewatch. It’s surprisingly slick and stylish, conjuring up thoughts of Tarantino’s or Guy Richie’s trademark styles, but much more emotional and poignant than anything either of them has ever made. And for the majority of the cast not being career actors, I was moved nearly to tears by some of the performances. Well-deserving of the first perfect score on my list. 5/5