Netflixed: Funny ha ha
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924): Murnau makes this about the sets and the lighting, to the point that the best actor in this is Emil Jannings’s shadow, which stays a step ahead. But the uneven social critique is vital; the gynophobic gossip sequence shows something is rotten in the state of Weimar even if Murnau and scenarist Carl Mayer don’t know what it is. And the coda, dissed or reduced to sarcasm by pathos fiends since its release, might be the loudest ending in movies. Fuck Sunrise, this is tougher.
The Navigator (Buster Keaton & Donald Crisp, 1924): James Agee wrote about the shipboard stalking scene in his seminal essay on the silent clowns “Comedy’s Greatest Era”, though he omitted the punchline, which, being on an intertitle, undermined his point — but it’s the words that put you over the boffo line. The movie eventually loses itself in cannibal panic, but most of it is great, thanks in no small part to Kathryn McGuire, the rare heroine capable of matching Buster’s slapstick. Top five Keaton.
Das Boot: 3.5 hour cut (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981): An achievement limited by the absence of analysis. It’s plausible that the crew of a U-boat might be more anti- than pro-Nazi, but how this could come about isn’t explained, and it doesn’t affect their actions. What we have is a bunch of exciting shit happening to guys on a submarine, which is more than 90% of movies give us.
Fast Five (Justin Lin, 2011): You spend a eternity waiting for the confrontation between the two failed next action stars. Vin Diesel knows he ain’t worth shit outside this franchise, which is suffused with his anachronistic sense of honour. The Rock, a more versatile performer who knows he can always get work, acts like he’s above the role, which, given that it requires him to say “You know I like my dessert first”, is true. Their face-offs are for the soul of bad movies: integrity versus camp. Battles are won, but the war goes on.
Soul Surfer (Sean McNamara, 2011): The target audience for this movie is people who aren’t horrible, which excludes me. It shouldn’t matter that the build-up is a worthless mix of proselytising and product placement. It might even be okay to want the horrible real-life accident to happen already; such is the pull of narrative. Anyway, it happens soon enough, and the bulk of the flick is tolerable sports movie schtick. But it is definitely not right to complain about bemoan the lack of blood in an inspirational Christian movie. Even blaming Mel Gibson seems hollow.
