So far in the AFI 100 project, the two films for which I had the lowest expectations--the silent movie and, now, the jingoistic musical--have been my favorites. Having never seen James Cagney in the role of a tough-guy, the skill with which he "played against character" was lost on me, but it hardly proved necessary to enjoy this biography of song-and-dance man George M. Cohan, who, along with the rest of his family, entertained legions around the turn of the (last) century. But the story of the showman's life is really just bookends for the film's second act, which is essentially an hour-long montage of Cohen's greatest hit, including "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Over There," "Give My Regards to Broadway," and "Grand Old Flag" (I had no idea one guy wrote all of those). Though there is some wincable acting and a couple of scenes that max out the corn-o-meter (the bit with the teens, 10 minutes from the end, is like a rejected Hee-Haw sketch), the bulk of the movie is so thoroughly delightful that you're willing to forgive a lot. Even the blackface.

And holy smokes, that Cagney can dance.

My rating: 9/10, best so far!

Next up in the AFI 100 Project: The Bridge on the River Kwai and Nashville.

The French Connection wasn't next in the AFI queue, but, earlier today when I heard that Roy Scheider had died, I decided to watch it anyway to honor the man.

A thoroughly entertaining film, but I'm a bit mystified as to how it wound up with the 1971 "Motion Picture of the Year" Oscar, but less inclusion (albeit just barely) on the AFI 100 list. Apparently it is famous for its "renowned car chase scene" (as the back of the DVD calls it), but it was bound to have at least one given that 50% of this movie involves one person following another. Seriously: there are cops stealthily tailing suspects on foot, cops running full-bore after suspects, cops slowly trolling behind suspects by vehicle, cops barreling after suspects at breakneck speeds, etc. At one point in the film there are two chases going on simultaneously: a security guard saunters after a suspect inside an elevated train, and, at street level, Gene Hackman races after the train in his automobile. It's, like, they had so many chases slated for the film that they had to start scheduling them concurrently.

Anyway, none of this detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. I'm a sucker for 70's-era stories set in inner-city America (see also: Rocky), and The French Connection illustrates why: the combination of grainy film-stock, openness about racial tensions, and devotion to method acting make them seem more authentic--even when they are big-budget and largely preposterous thrillers such as this one. 8/10, and RIP Roy Scheider.

Yesterday was Superbowl Sunday, so Pa Baldwin and I spent the afternoon as so many fathers and sons do around the nation: gathered in front of the big screen TV, drinking beer, and thrilling to the emotional rollercoaster that is Sophie's Choice.

All I really knew about the motion picture ahead of time was The Scene; from that I extrapolated that the whole film was set during the Holocaust. I was therefore confused when the film opened in 1947, with the eponymous Sophie safe and childless. Okay, thought I, it's a framing device: we'll get 10 minutes of this, an hour and a half of the main narrative, and then a brief epilogue. Wrong again, chief. The bulk of the film is a John Irvingesque relationship drama with genuinely funny moments, thanks to the comic styling of Kevin Kline (in his first movie!) and an extended sequence involving a reformed prude that can only be described as hilarious (an adjective I was pretty sure would not appear in this review). All this was good but not great. Without The Scene, I'm confident that Sophie's Choice would have long since been forgotten.

And, I must admit, the punch-in-the-gut impact of The Scene was somewhat muted by my (a) foreknowledge of the event it depicts, (b) familiarity with Streep's acting prowess, and (c) having previously endured Schindler's List, The Pianist, Into the Arms of Strangers, and probably a few more, the memories of which I have suppressed. Not enough to keep me from tearing up, but I didn't end the evening rocking in the corner, either. Definitely a haunter, though: The Scene has popped into my head half a dozen times since last night, and I keep watching the clip on Youtube^*, seemingly against my will.

I'm finding it hard to assign a rating to Sophie's Choice, mostly because it was so unlike what I had expected. I think I'd need to watch it again to really form an opinion--maybe Pa Baldwin and I will do that on Father's Day. For now, 7.5/10.

Next up in the AFI 100 Project: Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

* A warning to those who have never seen Sophie's Choise: watching this will not "ruin" the move, but, as I have said, will undoubtedly lessens its impact to some degree. If you ever expect to watch the film in its entirely, I'd strongly recommend foregoing the clip.

I'm only and hour into the 100 minute King Kong, but I'm so bored that I figured I may as well start typing. According to the AFI, this film is one of cinema's "greatest," but, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I do not think that word means what they think it means. I'm guessing that, in this case, the ol' double-k got the nod for being one of the most influential films of all time, but lord knows that 's not the same as greatness. Needless to say the special effects are outmoded, but I don't hold that against the film. After all, the quality of a movie shouldn't be judged by the caliber of its effects--which is exactly the point: strip them away from King Kong and you're not left with much. The acting ranges from workaday to wretched, and while the plot is moderately interesting, the middle third, which serves only to showcase the Amazing Stopmotion Animation!!!, is interminable if you don't find the f/x breathtaking. I will give the film props for lethality, though: I assumed that all death in this film would take place off camera, if at all, but, no, kong fucks up half a battalion of folks with extreme prejudice. The subtext of the film--that the real monsters are the humans, while Kong just wants to live in peace--is intriguing; too bad the filmmaker doesn't do much with it. Maybe Peter Jackson utilizes the material better in his 2005 remake. 5/10.

Yeah, chickened out of watching Sophie's Choice this week. I will try to work up the nerve to do so next.

It was Ye Olde Tymey Romantick Comedy night in the Baldwin household this evening.

Bringing Up Baby: Knowing nothing about this film beyond the title, I assumed it was just the "oh no, we're pregnant!" film of its era, a 1938 version of Knocked Up minus the lingering shots of Seth Rogen's ass. As it turns out, "Baby," in this case, is a leopard, which the brother of Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) has sent from Brazil to Connecticut as a gift to -- ahh, you know what? The leopard doesn't really matter. It's really just one of this screwball comedy's endless MacGuffins designed to throw Vance and Dr. David Huxley (Cary Grant) into a succession of zany situations. Lots of funny scenes (this restaurant bit, particularly from 5:37 on, is particularly inspired) and great lines ("Susan, you've got to get out of this apartment!" Huxley exclaims when he discovers the leopard in her room. "I can't," Vance explains, "I've got a lease."), but very little plot to tie it all together. Hypothetically the narrative is Huxley and Vance falling in love, but as Vance loves Huxley at first sight and Huxley is never given a reason to want to spend another moment, much less the rest of his life, in the company of Vance (aside from the fact that she's Katharine Freakin' Hepburn, obviously), this framing device is paper thin. Thus, the film feels less like a long, funny story and more like a standup comedy routine, a series of setup-straightline-punchline scenes just gummed together with a resolution tacked onto the end for the sake of closure. Which is fine, but wears thin at around the 45 minute mark--about half this film's running time. 6.5/10

City Lights: I was prepared to stoically endure this Charlie Chaplin "comedy" for the sake of checking it off my list, but holy smokes, I can't remember the last film that made me laugh this hard. Chaplin is so masterful that the gags succeed even when you see them coming a mile away--you know what the joke is going to be, but nothing can prepare you for Chaplin's sublime execution (e.g., the "Spaghetti Scene", which starts at 2:10 in this clip). Slapstick usually leaves me cold (I've never understood the appeal of the Three Stooges, for instance), but Chaplin imbues each pratfall with so much humanity that you feel like watching a close friend fall through an open manhole--now that's funny! I could level the same charge against City Lights that I did against Bringing Up Baby--it's more of a collection of sketches than a cohesive narrative--but the central premise, Chaplin falling for a blind flower girl, is so bittersweet that it pervaded every shot, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Plus, the final scene is amazing. 8/10

The next film in the AFI 100 Project will be ... oh, god. Sophie's Choice. If I'm going to break this resolution, I guess now's the time to do it.

Plowing through all of these old movies, I expected most to be tame and staid. Perhaps the rest are, but The Last Picture Show sure ain't. Larry McMurtry meditation on sex and death in a small, Southern town is pretty much just a hodgepodge of scandals all intertwined into a two hour narrative. The black and white cinematography and stilted delivery of lines in the first 15 minutes made me think this movie has been made shortly after the day in which it is set, 1951, but it rapidly becomes far more risque than that era would have allowed. (In reality, it was made in 1971--a fact that became apparent to me when I started recognizing actors, such as an impossibly young Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd.) Featuring a stellar performance by Ben Johnson, a fine balance of humor and pathos, and the most awkward sex scene I've seen on film, I can see why The Last Picture Show (just barely) made the AFI 100 list. 7.5/10 ... but I'll throw in another .5 for Cybill Shepherd's cans.

The next film in the AFI 100 Project will be Bringing Up Baby.

I just discovered that, late last year, the American Film Institute revised their List of the 100 Greatest Movies of All-Time [pdf]. Looking over the list, I was a little surprised at how many I have never seen.

Here's the breakdown, with films I've seen in green, films I haven't seen in red, and films I have seen but don't really recall well in yellow:

1. Citizen Kane (1941)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. Casablanca (1942)
4. Raging Bull (1980)
5. Singin' In The Rain (1952)
6. Gone With The Wind (1939)
7. Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
8. Schindler's list (1993)
9. Vertigo (1958)
10. The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
11. City Lights (1931)
12. The Searchers (1956)
13. Star Wars (1977)
14. Psycho (1960)
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
16. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
17. The Graduate (1967)
18. The General (1927)
19. On The Waterfront (1954)
20. It's A Wonderful life (1946)
21. Chinatown (1974)
22. Some like It Hot (1959)
23. The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)
24. E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982)
25. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
26. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)
27. High Noon (1952)
28. All About Eve (1950)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979)
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
32. The Godfather Part Ii (1974)
33. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
34. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (1937)
35. Annie Hall (1977)
36. The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
37. The Best Years Of Our lives (1946)
38. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948)
39. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
40. The Sound Of Music (1965)
41. King Kong (1933)
42. Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
45. Shane (1953)
46. It Happened One Night (1934)
47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
48. Rear Window (1954)
49. Intolerance (1916)
50. The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)
51. West Side Story (1961)
52. Taxi Driver (1976)
53. The Deer Hunter (1978)
54. M*a*s*h (1970)
55. North By Northwest (1959)
56. Jaws (1975)
57. Rocky (1976)
58. The Gold Rush (1925)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Duck Soup (1933)
61. Sullivan's Travels (1941)
62. American Graffiti (1973)
63. Cabaret (1972)
64. Network (1976)
65. The African Queen (1951)
66. Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981)
67. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68. Unforgiven (1992)
69. Tootsie (1982)
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
73. Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)
74. The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
75. In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
76. Forrest Gump (1994)
77. All The President's Men (1976)
78. Modern Times (1936)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969)
80. The Apartment (1960)
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic (1997)
84. Easy Rider (1969)
85. A Night At The Opera (1935)
86. Platoon (1986)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie's Choice (1982)
92. Goodfellas (1990)
93. The French Connection (1971)
94. Pulp Fiction (1994)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do The Right Thing (1989)
97. Blade Runner (1982)
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
99. Toy Story (1995)
100. Ben-hur (1959)

• A Night At The Opera
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• All About Eve
• The Apartment
• The Best Years Of Our lives
• Bonnie And Clyde
• The Bridge On The River Kwai
• Bringing Up Baby done!
• Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
• Cabaret
• City Lights done!
• The Deer Hunter
• Double Indemnity
• The French Connection done!
• The General
• The Gold Rush
• High Noon
• In The Heat Of The Night
• Intolerance
• It Happened One Night
• King Kong done!
• The Last Picture Show done!
• Midnight Cowboy
• Modern Times
• Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
• Nashville
• On The Waterfront
• The Philadelphia Story
• The Searchers
• Shane
• Singin' In The Rain
• Some like It Hot
• Sophie's Choice done!
• Sullivan's Travels
• Sunrise
• Sunset Blvd.
• Swing Time
• The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
• The Wild Bunch
• West Side Story
• Yankee Doodle Dandy done!

• The African Queen
• American Graffiti
• Annie Hall
• Ben-hur
• Duck Soup
• Gone With The Wind
• The Graduate
• The Grapes Of Wrath
• It's A Wonderful life
• The Maltese Falcon
• North By Northwest
• Psycho
• Rear Window
• Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
• The Sound Of Music
• Vertigo
• Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?