American movies, 1970-1979

from Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975)

My moviegoing: 2003

from Michael Polish's Northfork (2003)

Alright

Glenn Kenny is on fire this week. Here's another link.

The puky vomity despair

It gets depressing contemplating the future of film distribution and exhibition when you're a guy like me who likes all kinds of films and likes seeing them on the big screen. The modern, mainstream, American Hollywood film is at its nadir. It can't possibly get worse, but it just keeps getting worse. Those films are so poorly made, so indistinguishable from each other, so forgettable. Almost all the good mainstream American work is on television now, and that sucks. The square box is getting bigger and more rectangular, and the best shows are exploring the unique aspects of the medium of serialized home programming, but it's still a box, a piece of furniture in your house that has to compete with the telephone, your neighbors, your pets, your in-laws, etc. But mainstream culture is almost always mediocre, which is why it's so pleasurable when something good catches on. The bigger problems are the foreign and independent American filmmakers of high caliber who can no longer get their films distributed anywhere in this country, and the vapid new generation of homegrown independent filmmakers who have less ideas than Michael Bay and McG. I want to link to a horrifying interview with idiots in The Village Voice and Glenn Kenny's sadly funny rebuttal. Horrifying. Sadly funny.
Even though he's one of my absolute favorite filmmakers, I don't think Nicholas Ray is above criticism and no artist should be. However, these young filmmakers' willfully ignorant failure to understand basic film history and their use of infantilized teenspeak is appalling. What they have to say about Bigger than Life is beyond idiocy. They should be barred from ever holding a filmmaking device again. It's called a fucking melodrama for a reason. The non-verite acting is on purpose. You idiots. You fucking idiots. It's like criticizing Richard Pryor for telling jokes or Lucky Charms for being too marshmallowy. You are morons, and you should die horribly. Reinstate the draft.

First movie/last movie: Howard Hawks

Fig Leaves (1926)
Rio Lobo (1970)
Hawks' actual first film, 1926's The Road to Glory (not to be confused with a 1936 Hawks film of the same name), is lost.

American movies, 1970-1979

from Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)