Newsletter for
alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 22 of October 2021. No. 1036
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Dear
Friends,
Here I
am including an article by B.C. Pires on movies.
It
helps when watching cable TV, and choosing channels to watch.
Maybe you could be a collaborator in the analysis.
If you would like to collaborate to keep the Circular
going, at the end of this issue, you will find the instructions to where to
send your writings and also, important to send funds, I know your limitations.
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IN 2016, I told my son that the original 1997 German-language version of
Michael Heneke’s Funny Games was one of my 25 favourite films.
“Papa,” he chuckled, “you have about 500
of your 25 favourite films.”
I decided right then to come up with my
definitive list.
It took five years but I managed it just
in time for the TT Film Festival week.
To pick 25 from 500 would be impossible
without an algorithm FaceBook might envy, but I stumbled upon a tool capable of
cutting the longest list.
Here, then, in reverse order of how
many times I can watch them enthusiastically and always take away
something new every time are my Top 25 movies.
Using this method honestly denies some
of my favourite filmmakers – David Lynch, Wong Kar Wai, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc
Godard, Alfred Hitchcock – and many of my favourite films.
None of The Vanishing,
Incendies, Parasite, The Hunt, The Lives of Others, City of God, Get Out or
The Apu Trilogy could make the final cut.
Even Dekalog, ten short films by
my favourite filmmaker, Krzysztof Kieslowsk, and inspired by the Ten
Commandments wandered for 5 years in the desert of the long list without
getting out.
Tragically, one of my favourite
directors, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, couldn’t squeeze een with even his best
film, Amores Perros.
Nor could two each of the most beautiful
films of two of history’s most sordid subjects (Schindler’s List & Life
is Beautiful and 12 Years a Slave & Django Unchained);
but they shouldn’t complain when two of the films in the top three of many top
ten lists (Citizen Kane & Casablanca) aren’t on mine; Orson
Welles can fend for himself but omitting Casablanca leaves me both
red-faced & regretful; and, next time I watch it, I’ll think I should have
cut No 24 on my list.
Here then, in reverse order, are my 25
favourite films:
25. The Sixth Sense. M Night
Shyamalan’s first film set his personal bar so high, all his following films
limbed under it; even after many viewings (though this one stands up to close,
repeated scrutiny).
24. It’s a Wonderful Life. Frank
Capra & Jimmy Stewart’s best known movie would probably top the list, as a
Christmas standard, if one didn’t make allowances for Yuletide sentiment and
ponche crema.
23. Planet of the Apes. The
original 1968 Charlton Heston version still stuns; if you don’t know the last
frame reveal, it’s one of the great moments in cinema.
22. 12 Angry Men. The original
courtroom thriller is still riveting today, 64 years later.
21. The Silence of the Lambs. In
the 20 years since it was made, only Denis “Incendies, Sicario”
Villeneuve’s Prisoners approaches Jodie Foster & Anthony Hopkins’
magnum opus for rigid tension throughout.
20. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly.
The spaghetti Western as gourmet fine dining, with Clint Eastwood in his best
role as the Man with No Name (though, in this one, he’s actually called
Blondie).
19. The Exorcist. From the
opening notes of the theme (the opening notes of Mike Oldfield’s LP-long Tubular
Bells), a horror film would need something extraordinary – like Jack Nicholson
in his prime – to be more worthy of repeat watching than this one.
18. Aguirre: The Wrath of God.
The film that best captures the Caribbean human condition was made by a German
(Werner Herzog) and every West Indian business & political leader today is
captured in Klaus Kinski’s portrayal of the egotist slowly descending into
Hell.
17. Locke, a thriller set almost entirely
in the driver’s seat of a BMW on the motorway to London is the modern update of
12 Angry Men.
16. A Clockwork Orange. The first
of three Stanley Kubrick films in the list is his superb rendition of the
better version (without the final chapter) of Anthony Burgess’ great
work.
15. Taxi Driver. Martin
Scorsese’s great New York film would have clipped Raging Bull on the lead performance
of Robert “You Got a Gun” De Niro, even without spectacular support from the
very young Jodie Foster and the amazing Harvey Keitel
14. Apocalypse Now. Even
Vietnamese American writer Thanh Nguyen’s novel, The Sympathiser, can’t dampen
my love for the first Francis Ford Coppola film on the list, partly because it
was based on the far superior Joseph Conrad work, Heart of Darkness, but mainly
because of Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne,
Harrison Ford, Dennis Hopper, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, a smoking
soundtrack, Playboy playmates dropping out of helicopters and tigers jumping
out of the bush.
13. Pulp Fiction. Quentin
Tarantino’s big movie “beats back” his other contenders –Reservoir Dogs,
Django Unchained, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – but not just because of
the “big needle scene”; every scene in Pulp Fiction is a big one; except
for the ones featuring the director's acting.
12. American Beauty. Sam Mendes’
first film remains his best, the way I see it; which is at least once a year.
With awe.
11. Elephant. Gus Van Sant’s
loving depiction of the worst kind of real life horror gets better the longer
and more often you look at it, and it does not age, like truly beautiful
people.
10. The Deer Hunter. Michael
Cimino’s Vietnam film will last even longer than Francis Ford Coppola’s,
largely because of the long, lovingly shot slow scenes in America; particularly
the end. With De Niro up against – literally – Christopher Walken, and with
Meryl Streep, John Cazale and John Savage in support, with what might be the
best use of non-original music in cinema (the belting out of Frankie Valli’s
Can’t Take My Eyes Off You in the bar) and the best one shot of them all, this
is American cinema at, or very near, its best. The only reason it doesn’t peg
higher is I’ve watched the films above it more.
9. No Country for Old Men. The
Coen Bros could easily have had several other films in this list – Fargo,
The Big Lebowski, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Blood Simple, Raising Arizona
– but their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s hard novel, plus Josh Brolin, Tommy
Lee Jones and Javier Bardem, tops them all.
8. On Body & Soul. Hungarian
director Ildiko Enyedi’s 2017 is the newest film on the list and the most
unusual boy-meets-girl you’re likely to see, ever. A lot of it is shot in a
slaughterhouse (suggesting Ms Enyedi is vegan) and hugely powerful, sometimes
overwhelming images abound. But it is first and foremost a gripping, magical
story of love, hope – and dreams – capable of redeeming us all. You can watch
it in high-def on Netflix.
7. Old Boy. Chan-Wook Park’s best
film (with apologies to Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Thirst) has
to be watched a dozen times for the viewer to begin to appreciate its depth;
and, even then, you still have to turn away from two scenes (neither of which
is the one in which the protagonist eats a live octopus raw). Violent, angry,
vengeful – and beautiful and hopeful.
6. The Shining. Stanley Kubrick
tended to take forever to make a film; and then tended to define the genre when
he did: his Vietnam film was Full Metal Jacket, his gladiator movie was Spartacus;
his satire was Dr Stangelove and his horror, The Shining. Almost
scarier every time you watch it, this is a film that can curdle the blood just
remembering almost any scene. Even without the axe. How’d you like some ice
cream, Doc? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Here’s Johnny. There’s
a masterpiece.
5. Funny Games. Michael Haneke’s
powerful argument against violence is made so well, people walked out of the
cinema in protest against the violence he is actively campaigning against (and
does not actually show on screen).
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even
half-a-century on, Kubrick’s 1968 magnum opus remains, not just valid, but on
top of modern equivalents. The cut-shot from the bone flung up into the air to
the spaceship falling has not been bettered by 53 years of CGI and green screen
trickery. The final sequences are as scary to the middle-aged man today as they
were to the ten-year-old boy who saw them at Astor cinema in Woodbrook.
3. Three Colours (Blue/White/Red).
Krzysztof Kieslowski’s great trilogy, separate-but-connected films inspired by
the ideals of the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) get better
the more you watch them, because you see how much work went into making the
connections, like the foreground court scene in White being the
background one in Red and vice versa. In one scene in Blue,
coffee rises by capillary action to turn a white sugar cube brown; Kieslowski
shopped around the cafes of Paris to find a sugar cube that would take four-to-five
seconds to turn brown, not two-to-three or nine-to-ten seconds; because he felt
that was all the time he could ask viewers to look at and think about the cube
and the coffee and the predicament of his heroine, pondering new love. Working
as hard as that pays off handsomely. And for decades.
2. The Sopranos. Some might argue
that David Chase’s great work was not cinema at all, as it was shot for TV; but
one of the earliest and still the best cable channels, Home Box Office,
repudiates those naysayers with its slogan: It’s not TV, it’s HBO. The
best American cinema since The Godfather also deals with the
Family through the eyes of the Mob; having watched the whole 86-hour series
five times now, my second film could arguably really be my top one, except that
my number one is:
1. The Godfather, Parts I & II.
The film that made me come up with the test that settled my 25 Top Movies list.
No matter how often I’ve seen it (and I’ve lost count now), every time I walk
through a room in which The Godfather, I or II, is on a screen, I stop
in my tracks and start watching the movie; after a minute or two, I sit down
and continue watching the movie. If I get up again before the film ends, it’s
only for popcorn. Easily the most watchable film of my life, it’s also the
original Family/Family film. Watch The Godfatherand you know all
families are essentially made up of criminals. Francis Ford Coppola directing
Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, Diane
Keaton, John Cazale, Dominic Chianese, Richard S Casteliano, Richard Conte, Ave
Vigoda and Talia Shire and the most quotable dialogue in all cinema make this
the best movie of all time.
Even if people under age 30 think that
really has to be one of the Marvel Universe action flicks.
BC Pires is taking 400 Blows for leaving
out La Strada, Chinatown, Double Indemnity, Psycho, Force Majeure, This Is
Spinal Tap, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings and plenty others that
did not pass the test
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gonwise3@aol.com
Wed, Jun 2 at 11:50 AM
This mail is for Laszlo –
Hi there - this is Anne in Royal Palm
Beach.
Brian has given you my wrong email -
that was my husband's email (RIP) here are my details:
Anne Gonsalves
170 Saratoga Blvd. East
Royal Palm Beach, FL 33411-8279
email: gonwise3@aol.com
Phone: 561-318-4084
I can send you a personal check - or a
check thru my bank A/C at Wells Fargo.
If I'm not home - leave a message and
I'll call you back.
Anne
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Nigel Boos <nigelboos@gmail.com>
Mon, Oct 26 at 7:20 AM
George,
Your question and the timing of it are
both topical and worthwhile.
I find the general level of interest
among the MSB OBs to be rather pathetic and lethargic, and although I recognize
and applaud the effort being made by Ladislao, Don Mitchell. Kazim Abasali, Joe
Berment, yourself and Csaba, and maybe just a few more “regular contributors”.
I realize that our membership is
diminishing, with the deaths of many of the older OB’s.
I think we’ve had a good run, all under
the leadership of Ladislao and you guys.
Your persistence in ”getting the news
out” is noteworthy and welcomed, but I don’t really know how much longer this
can go on.
There is no general feeling of
commitment among the “younger set”.
So, I thank you and the fellas named
above for your marvellous efforts on behalf of all of us.
If, as in all things, the time has come
to close up shop, perhaps issue #1000 of the Circular might be earmarked as the
last of our issues.
This would be a shame, but is seems
inevitable in the long run.
God bless us all.
Nigel
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EDITED by Ladislao Kertesz, kertesz11@yahoo.com, if you would like to subscribe for
a whole year and be in the circular’s mailing list or if you would like to
mention any old boy that you would like to include, write to me.
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Photo:
59UN0002RLSS,
ladislao kertesz Royal life saving medal
58UN0010SCOUTS
03UN0002GRP,
Ladislao Kertesz Matias de Fedak and Guiseppe Braggio
03MD0002REUNION2003
