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O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
This is a phenomenally creative work, and one of my very favorite Coen films. A lot of the brothers' work gets criticized for being too episodic, and sometimes that is the case, and it doesn't work. Here it does; the structure of the film, based on Homer's 'The Odyssey', allows for a segmented style which makes it easy to shift tones from humorous to tragic to scary, and back to humorous again without seeming to convoluted or bittersweet. These characters are actually caricatures, and it feels easy and right to flow between them and enjoy their quirks without investing too much in their ethics or morals. Lucky for us, the casting of the three convicts is as perfect as has ever been in a Coens film; Clooney is magnetic (without being flashy); Turturro is refreshingly normal- not too smart, but always skeptical; and Nelson is the heart of the trio, his idotic but sweet antics always in favor of good intention. This religious pilgrimage of sorts works mostly because the cast and crew had fun making it, and the evidence is all up on screen. With a fantastic soundtrack and thrilling laughs from start to finish, this is a must-see for all kinds of film lovers.
Los Olvidados (1952)
A gritty social drama which works in both a neorealistic manner and in a deeply personal surrealist fashion. The images on screen always seem like part of a documentary; the disturbing violence which fills the film works so naturally as a commentary on what murder means to us as spectators and what it means to the children who commit it here. There is no doubt of the effects it has: Jaibo's monsterous rage and desensitization works an opposition on us, and the toll that violence takes on little Pedro is also a heavy burden for us. Though this is presented mostly as a straightforward narrtive, Bunuel uses his surrealist touch to make dreams integral to feeling and symbols key to our understanding of the themes. Chickens are particularly recurring as a metaphor for weakness, and some of the most frightening scenes seem to take root around the naive animals. The most affecting scene in the film may be the last; a boy is animalized as the subject of a tragic act of maliciousness and the sequence is framed to be an identicle match of a similar one in the director's early documentary, 'Las Hurdes'. There are no compromises taken; sexual desire is handled in a barbarically fetishistic manner and motifs of cruelty flood the film's reels and corrupt us seemingly directly. This is an unflinching masterpiece from one of the art form's most provocative visionaries.
*note*: at this point in my life, I'd consider Bunuel my favortie filmmaker. He's profoundly changed the way I look at movies and also the way I'd like to go about making them in the next few years.
Inferno (1982)
On the whole, this is a pretty awesome achievement. It's nightmarish and theatrical, playing out with a kind of divine staginess made stylish by a lighting scheme almost on par with 'Suspiria' and camera angles Carol Reed would admire. Argento always refers to this as one of his most accomplished visions, and it's easy to see why. It is a piece which fits perfectly into the director's puzzle of a career and works not only as the middle segment in the "Three Mothers" trilogy but also as a frightening work on its own. The first twenty minutes of the film are some of Argento's very finest (and scariest), but the film keeps at an even pace until its fiery conclusion.
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