#21 — The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) I’m going to wind up dealing with this sort of thing again when I get to the nineteen-fifties, so let’s address it head on. When I put The Wild Bunch on this … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-One
#22 — Salesman (Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, 1968) I tend to think of the documentaries from the Maysles brothers as fairly wooly and structureless. Grey Gardens, undoubtedly their most famous film, is an intimate portrait of the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Two
#23 — The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962) The guests at a snooty, upper crust dinner party adjourn to the music room, engaging in discussion, whiling away the night. Then the time comes to leave, many of them announcing their … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Three
#24 — Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) For obvious reasons, I don’t expend a lot of words in these pieces examining the flaws, small as they might be, that might exist in the films that made my ranking, but let me … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Four
#25 — The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962) There are a plenty of genres and styles that once prospered in American cinema that have fallen out of favor or been modified to the point of being unrecognizable, but none of them inspired observers to see elegiacal profundity in the offerings from their twilight quite like the western. In part, that’s because westerns, no matter how sprightly and charmed, always seemed to carry a tint of the forlorn to them. By the times films were conveying tales of the Wild West, it was already a bygone era being … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Five
#26 — Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969) I had the misfortune of starting in completely the wrong place with Greek-born, French resident director Costa-Gavras. By the time I was properly paying attention, Costa-Gavras was mired in heavy Hollywood dramas that were deadened … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Six
#27 — Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964) In principle, I admire the recent overhaul bestowed upon the James Bond franchise, the clear shucking off of the outer layer of hoary tradition that made it seem increasingly old-fashioned. I have no calcified veneration for the sanctity of the character, caring not a whit if they adhere to traditions like the timely issuance of new murderous gizmos sure to come in handy on the new mission or the casual introduction, last name first. I even remember being excited about the unsolicited suggestion given publicly to the producers several years ago–by Entertainment Weekly, I … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Seven
#28 — La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) I will concede from the beginning that I sometimes find the vivid abstractions of Federico Fellini to be too dizzying. I recognize his mastery of a certain form of cinema, even celebrate the way he eradicated boundaries with his skillful braiding of dream logic and traditional narrative. And yet there are times when there is just too much unpacking to be done, too much presented as a brazen challenge to the audience to find meaning in the obscurity. He writes an equation on a chalkboard and then uses an eraser to smear … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Eight
#29 — Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg, 1967) What Cool Hand Luke is going for is made clear as can be right there on the movie poster: “The man…and the motion picture that simply do not conform.” Released at the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Twenty-Nine
#30 — Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965) “Once we know the number one, we believe that we know the number two, because one plus one equals two. We forget that first we must know the meaning of plus.” These are the words … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Thirty
Coffee for Two 