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The 100 funniest people in film and Television history
About the author: R.T. Firefly has been involved in the comedy business for over 30 years, from television and movies to stand up and writing.
PLEASE NOTE! The top ten are in order of importance.
11-100 ARE IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER.
Rolling Stone's SNL 40 years of Cast Members Ranked, Adjusted For Reality.
Funniest Sitcoms of All Time
A Reliable List of the 60 Best TV Shows Ever From a Pro
Notes:
Obviously, I am not familiar with every show in TV history, but for the most part, this comprises a fairly comprehensive opinion from at least the early 70's, so that means it is very possible that I did intentionally leave your favorite shows off the list. Sorry. But hey, we can still be friends.
Shows with excessive violence are usually not my cup of tea, so there are many highly rated shows that are not here.
There are only 20 or so shows on this list that I would consider "top 10" quality. Inclusion on this list does not mean I was a huge fan of the show and thought it was amazing. Heck, even Seinfeld has some episodes I didn't care for, but all of the shows on this list are at least good, with footnotes taken into account.
Please read footnotes! Many shows on this list need an explanation because only certain seasons are good (see Happy Days, for example).
IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER!
Reviews
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Overrated because it's anti-war.
I will admit my bias upfront: Who doesn't know that war is hell? Who doesn't know that a heroic war film is fantasy? I find the strawman argument that "Nobody shows you what war is REALLY like, but we will!", so tired and ignorant. Even prior to 1930, there were ample novels and movies that broached this topic. This angle may appeal to those who insanely want to pretend all war is bad (as if 'no war' is always an option and nobody ever thought of that), but I don't find this shallow thinking entertaining. In fact, considering the price so many pay, it's depressing.
That being said, I can enjoy a good "war is hell" movie. I enjoyed Platoon, in spite of Oliver Stone's heavy political hand. Good film making is good film making. All Quiet On the Western Front is not good film making. I'm taking into consideration the era and what they had to work with, I'm trying to be fair. I like many films from this era. I even take into account how unnecessary WWI is said to be. Even so, 'All Quiet is simply bad storytelling and not as good as people say.
The opening scene was a harbinger of what was to come; a professor lecturing his class on the glories of war - over the top, on the head, melodramatic - then the reactions of the students had all the subtlety of a monster truck rally - Lets Goooo! I was willing to buy it from John Belushi in Animal House, but not here. An inexcusable fail was the lack of any accuracy in the military training segments. Considering that director Lewis Milestone was actually in the army during World War I, it's hard to understand how that part was so campy and inaccurate. There is a line that can get crossed when things become too silly, and, in this case, it starts feeling like bad propaganda.
Some of the acting is very good, the lead characters especially. The cinematography is excellent, as well as other techs - wardrobe, set design - but the movie drags in many scenes and takes too long to tell simple plot points, like the getting drunk in the bar scene, or the swimming/partying with the girls scene. Then they sell short the very dramatic scenes by hitting you over the head with obviousness.
There is also the issue here with the perceived importance of a film. This movie won many awards, it's old and black and white, and we all know only cool people enjoy those films. It is on important lists as one of the best movies of all time. This undoubtedly influences many to agree with that trend for fear of appearing irrelevant or ignorant. I have no doubt that some do find this movie compelling. After all, Die Hard is considered a classic by many, but, as with here, it's not.
All things considered, it's not a bad movie, and there are some worthwhile parts to it, but it is nowhere near as good as the hype.
The Kennel Murder Case (1933)
Excellent film for its genre.
Old films are generally better than anything made today - the wardrobe, writing, set design, hair, even just the peek into a world where virtually everything was superior in both style and quality. The Kennel Murder Case checks all those boxes and much more. This could have easily been written by Agatha Christie. It's a fun ride that sucks you in. The cast of characters is fun and the story keeps you guessing. As far as murder mysteries go, this is right up there with the greats. William Powell is excellent, of course, with shades of his Thin Man character. Directed by Michael Curtiz of Casablanca fame, it's filmed beautifully with lush sets and all of the things you simply can't find in simple movies anymore. It's a fun ride in a world long gone and well worth checking out.
Patriot (2015)
1st Season is the best Drama series ever. 2nd season, well...
Not to be an echo here, but this is, without exaggeration, the best drama series I have ever seen. It is funny, intelligent, fun, sad and wildly original. It can't be compared to anything as there has never been anything like it. The acting is superb. The art design is even interesting. The first season from start to finish is magnificent. The second season, well, that becomes more and more bizarre until, I hate to say, it sort of jumps the shark. The 2nd season has its moments, and is still fun, but perhaps from the heights from which it fell, it was a disappointment to me. None the less, if you start this, block out an entire day as you'll want to binge watch the entire first season at least.
Barry (2018)
Season 3... why?
The first two seasons of this show were extraordinary. Hader and Berg told a story of how complicated life can become and walked the thin line of how we as humans do bad things, yet justify them in our own heads, no matter how terrible they might be. It was a superb psychological study, and they did it all with comedy, which is an amazing achievement. Then came season 3.
First off, did we learn nothing from the Jim and Pam relationship on the Office? You cannot allow main characters to fulfill their desires for each other and continue on with their story. The story ends there. You've ruined the tension which made the relationship so dynamic. In the same way, bringing Noho Hank and Christobal together as lovers ruined one of the best dynamics in Barry. In fact, even letting on that they are gay was a huge letdown. The tension of not knowing was hilarious and energized every scene they were in. This disappointment is evidenced in Michael Irby's (Christobal) performance, which went from outstanding and the perfect adversary/partner to Soho Hank, to confused and directionless. Of course it did, he had nothing to contrast against. It's like pushing a moving car. It's no longer interesting.
In season 3 Barry simply goes off the rails. The police suddenly become Keystone cop idiots, lowly main characters are advanced to stupefying achievements without respect to reality, people are put into new situations without explanation. It all feels like a bad dream, which was how I was anticipating the season to resolve. As cliché as that may be, it would have at least explained why everything had become so weird. Even the cinematography feels different. Where the first two seasons felt like gritty film noir, a hallmark of HBO productions, season 3 felt off, like a Mentos commercial. Bad Canadian TV made Christmas movie feeling.
And then there is the change of focus from the star of the show to very uninteresting, whiney, untalented minor characters. Why? It feels like it was written by a 12 year old fantasizing about what being a cop or a mobster or a TV star must be like. Contrast the scene in the Season 1 pilot where Barry confronts the car full of Chechen assassins - hilarious, yet riveting, gritty, realistic - with the motorcycle gang hit in Season 3, ep. 6, where things suddenly turn into an episode of The A-Team. Ho... wha... Why?
Hader is superb throughout, which no doubt has amazed everybody familiar with him (who knew a comedian could be THIS good?!), but clearly the 3 year break, and whatever changed during that time, ruined the focus of the show. Pity, it had the makings of one of the best TV series ever. No exaggeration. Whoever you were listening to, or, more likely, not listening to in the first two seasons, go back to that.
The Hyperions (2022)
Cary Elwes is great in this terrible movie.
Cary Elwes is one of those guys that everytime you see him in something you ask yourself, "I love this guy, why don't I see him in more stuff?" That definitely applies here. Though the movie itself is fairly awful, it may be worth checking out just to watch Elwes. Director Jon McDonald misses bigtime with his sophomore outing in a very poor, all style and no substance movie that might be excellent for all audiences, content wise, but I doubt anyone would stick around past the first half hour to see how it ends. The hubris for an inexperienced director to try such an ambitious project from the super hero genre with such a small budget was where things first went wrong. McDonald tries to make up for it with cool photography and other tricks, borrowing styles from the likes Wes Anderson, but the end result only underscores how bad the script is (written by the director, naturally). There is no story to follow, no character development, no amazing special effects, and much more (less?). Outside of Elwes, nobody in the cast does anything worth watching. In fact, the only other character I found at all interesting was a fat security guard that only had a few lines. I gave this movie 4 stars because of Elwes, otherwise it would get a 3.
The Tomorrow War (2021)
Cliche woke banal pandering claptrap from beginning to end.
Not only is everything in this movie cliche, but nothing even makes any sense. A partial list.
We open with a Christmas party where a TV is showing ... anyone? Soccer, of course. Because it's a Christmas party so of course soccer.
The small caliber machine guns that never run out of ammo and are never once reloaded have little to no effect on the monsters, so, of course, we should bring those into the future to unsuccessfully kill the monsters.
Apparently black women rule the world in the future. All those in command were women, usually black. There were no men in charge in the entire movie save Chris Pratt.
They take completely untrained civilians, arm them, and drop them randomly in space over a large city from a thousand feet with no plan, no leader and no clue what to look for. Most all of them die from hitting the pavement, but some miraculously live by landing in a roof top pool. Is this the authors way of telling us that black women are incompetent morons that make terrible leaders?
Aliens right out of all aliens movie in the past 40 years. If I asked you to draw me a picture of one before you saw the movie you'd likely come very close. Giant mouth full of sharp teeth, worm looking tentacles, slimy, Jaba the Hut skin, crazy strong and make low level clicking sounds.
Aliens too stupid to build any types of weapons to defeat others/defend themselves, but had no problem building a space ship and navigating it to another galaxy.
Constant action, noise and explosions like in a Transformers movie with no plot except to communicate "action". I'm sorry, was that a spoiler?
Chris Pratt was good so I gave it an extra star.
Afghanistan: The Great Game (2012)
A ludicrous retelling of history.
I can only imagine this movie was paid for by Afghanis or someone that has it in for the West. How the makers of this documentary feel they can get away with it is beyond me. Are people really this stupid? I guess if you don't think and just "feel", the film making is high enough quality that it works on some people. This documentary is tantamount to painting the Nazis as victims in WWII. I'm not saying there isn't blame to spread around with all parties involved, but this film tries to make the slaughter of women and children look virtuous.
The Blood of Jesus (1941)
Think of this as a documentary
This is a fascinating movie considering its origins and production. The movie itself is very amateur, like a bad student film, the tech specs laughably bad, editing as bad as anything you're likely to ever see, but all that is part of its charm. The value of this movie is in its historical value. This is the beginning of the black film industry. At the time this was made, blacks had little to no power in the film industry and racial segregation was the norm. With this void in the market, blacks took it upon themselves to make product for that market. This film feels like exactly what it is - the very beginning of an industry where novice people are creating their own market. As bad as it is on many levels, it has the same honesty and simplicity that gave us the Mississippi Delta blues and black gospel music. The result, though amateur, is surprisingly interesting and entertaining. It's also fun to watch what black Americans found entertaining in 1941. This is an important movie that needs to be viewed and preserved.
Fat Head (2009)
If you can suffer through the bad attempts at comedy, this film is otherwise excellent.
A fantastic documentary with some real eye opening material, but the bad comedy, ug. Tom, leave the comedy to the pros. It would have been a much more enjoyable viewing/learning experience had it just been straight forward the entire way through. A must watch for excellent information on nutrition and how easily government and other fields can go astray.
This film came out in 2009 and the information in it did not hit the mainstream until around 2014 or so. In my observations there is no other field in the world as fraught with misinformation as nutrition. Most people just seem to make things up and/or adopt ideas that suit their image. Very little is understood about nutrition, but this movie takes a very scientific and un-opinionated approach. I appreciated that, a rare trait in a documentary now days.
Mr. Robot (2015)
Some decent acting, preposterous and cliché writing
The writing on this show is so bad it makes me laugh. If you are an Occupy Dolt Street goon, I'm sure it will play right into your "Freedom is the enemy" meme. Seriously, the name of the antagonist company is Evil Corp. That's not its nickname, that's the real name of the evil corporation where the evil white CEO beats up homeless people for his stress relief en lieu of a hand held smooshy face thing where the eyes bug out, I suppose. The author obviously feels logic is for chumps, and has his protagonists violating the very rules they condemn others for. The Characters are cliché and "dirtied up" for what passes for badass now in entertainment, and as usually happens in Hollywood, the wrong people are tagged as the bad guys, while the real bad guys are proposed as the solution. Some of the acting is decent, especially the lead, the tech specs are nice, but the foundation of the show, the story and the characters, are built on quicksand. Seriously, moral depravity and socio economic opinions aside, this show is filmed for adults, but written for junior high schoolers.
Hits (2014)
From the cult of New York sketch comedy comes the dud of the decade
I cannot think of when I've seen so much talent squandered in a comedic movie as with David Cross's 'Hits'. But then again, I'm not convinced this was supposed to be a comedy. It is possible Cross has gotten so advanced in his irony that this 90 minute critique of the unwashed flyover idiots - and the equally gullible New York "hipsters", and, honestly, everybody but Cross himself - is actually a hybrid documentary, the actors unawares they were executing the author's cunning critique of how gullible everybody in the world is, except the Davidians, of course.
Cross has talent like Amy Sedaris, Michael Cera and the always hilarious Dave Koechner, and uses them for all of a couple scenes each, never once putting them in a situation where they can show off their comedic abilities, rather, rolling out one tired, pandering inside joke after another. In one scene where Michael Cera sells pot to a few nerdy hipsters, the comedy centers around how particular some potheads are over their specific type of grass, a hilarious set piece if you happen to be one of the hundreds of people in the world that has witnessed such absurdities.
The script is trite, cliché and one dimensional. It is so clumsy getting out of the gate that a full 45 minutes in I still had no idea what the movie was about, nor had I laughed once, nor did I care about a single character. In the end, Hits is nothing more than a blathering and pointless monologue, typical of Cross in recent years, where he criticizes the minutia of people that are not as enlightened as he and his cult. To confirm that I'm not just using hyperbole, go to Youtube and look for Cross's diatribe on Jim Belushi, all because Belushi didn't sign an autograph once. It's proof positive Cross has lost his mind, and the defense of his idiotic actions in the comments section evidence of a cult.
It seems incredible that with all the success Cross had in the past with the highly acclaimed Mr. Show and his hilarious turn in Arrested Development, he could not find a better project to put his time and efforts into than... well, most everything he's done, and now this pointless waste of time. One has to wonder if maybe it was Odenkirk that came up with all those funny ideas on Mr. Show and Cross was just in the right place at the right time. He is a funny actor, no doubt, but I'm afraid he's become twice the gullible idiot of those he finds copious time to ridicule.
Wayward Pines (2015)
Like a lame version of Lost only lamer
This feels a lot like an M. Night Shamalama project. I suspect his hand is fairly heavy in the decision making process on this one. Matt Dillon is a fine and interesting actor, and drew me to watch the pilot He has plenty of company here with other fine actors, all of whom cannot save this train wreck of a show. The problem with Wayward Piles, as with most of Shamalamadingdongs work, is that it expects you to drop all pretenses of reason and believability and go for a ride with the silly, poorly conceived fantasies of the author. Nothing makes sense, but if you just turn off your brain and stop asking questions, then it might hold your attention. Unfortunately, even for those who are willing to, or long ago have, turned off their brains, this show feels set up for nothing more than an old fashioned Charlie Brown and Lucy missed football kick. I have no idea what the ending holds, as I only made it through three episodes before I couldn't take it anymore, but there seems to be only two ways for this to end. Either the city is real, in which case nothing makes any sense whatsoever, or it is imagined by a crazy Matt Dillon character, in which case it makes no sense whatsoever. Either way, the show is primarily nothing more than trickery to keep viewers confused so they might come back again to resolve things, which of course, will never happen in a satisfactory way. It seems the makers of Waylow Pines has borrowed ideas of several good shows, (i.e. Lost, Twin Peaks, The X-files et. al.) and ignored any of the important things those shows did to stay on the air for so long, while copying their grave mistakes.
D.U.I. (1986)
I have only seen about 10 minutes of this, but it changed my life.
There is, or should be (was anyways) a 10 min. clip of this movie on Youtube featuring the punk/rockabilly band Jon Wayne. It turned me on to the band and genre they perhaps invented and was hilarious. It featured clips of the band performing live, clips of them in the studio and, for lack of a better way of describing it, clips like you might see at a night club of random public domain silliness. It also features a very crude but hilarious video of one of the members of Jon Wayne in a recording studio drunkenly "mixing" their best song, in my opinion, Mr. Egyptian.
If you are not familiar with Jon Wayne, they were a side project formed by some punk studio musicians (is there such a thing?). They played homage, tongue in cheek, to country music of the 60's and 70's, but beefed it up a bit with a rockabilly sensibility. This is very rare footage indeed and to my knowledge it is not available via conventional outlets. I would love to get my hands on a copy of this movie if anyone knows where to come by one.
The Please Watch the Jon Lovitz Special (1992)
Half hour Fox TV special that was ill-conceived but still a little funny (emphasis on 'little').
This half hour special (it's title declares it a "show", was this supposed to be a pilot?) was a goof on the Playhouse 90 genre, (i.e.) a play is filmed live on stage and broadcast. The difference being, what with this a Lovitz comedy special, he is lampooning himself and the genre. What would you call this, a mockudrama? At any rate, the episode had a sort of Damn Yankees feel to it. It centered on a baseball player, something about if he slides into home he will die from an old head injury, and, naturally, he must make up his mind at the end of the play whether or not to slide headfirst into home to win the game. He does and I can't remember what happens, which pretty much sums up this show. Which is not to say the show didn't have it's moments. At the top of the show Lovitz tells a row of illustrious directors, Rob Reiner, Ron Underwood, et. al., that if they see anything they like during the play simply pick up the phone in front of them and it would ring a phone on the stage. During dramatic moments Lovitz would gesture to the directors and the phone. When the phone would ring, it was always to offer work to someone other than Lovitz.
The thing was loaded with stars and for the life of me I couldn't figure out who was able to swing that. I remember a gag where Alex Rocco is shot through the glasses ala The Godfather and his last words are "Not the other eye", then they cut away to Duvall and Caan in the audience, high fiving.
The concept was really strange, and I like strange, but this just didn't work. It had it's moments now and then, Lovitz is a funny guy after all, but he strikes out here. Interesting how they list all the actors as themselves. As I recall they almost all played characters in the play. Not worth checking out, but at half an hour, not too painful.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
If your conscience has been seared into a fried clove of crispy black garlic... Have we got a film for you!
So you want to go see a movie. You check the IMDb and see this film is getting an 8.9 rating (#16 on the top 250). It stars Daniel Day Lewis, he's a great actor. The TV ads look smart, and what's that "milkshake" line about anyway? Off you go. Three and a half hours later you return home and go on the IMDb and vote it a 10 out of 10. Why? Because you are a secret mind-controlled drone of the company that made this film and you always do what you are told. That is the only plausible explanation I can come up with for the extraordinarily high ratings There Will Be Blood is receiving. That or your moral compass only points south.
This film is nothing more than a magnificently crafted pile of poop and frankly, I find its undeserving numbers highly suspect. There are plenty of examples where most every critic gets it "wrong" on a popular film, so no need to re-trod that ground (watch The Aristocrats if you don't believe me, I dare you). But a quick perusal of the IMDb comments index for this film seems to tell a different story than a movie voted higher than #18 Raiders of the Lost Ark or #36 Apocalypse Now. Searching in chronological order, about half the comments say they hate this film. Another quarter didn't think it was as good as everyone said, and only about a quarter praise the film. With that track record, this film should score somewhere in the 5 to 7 range. We should all hope that the studios have figured out a way to pump up IMDb scores. Otherwise, we live in a world where pointless violence and hypocrisy are celebrated as the ideal.
No doubt, this film has its merits. Daniel Day Lewis gives an award winning performance. I love it when an actor takes chances and I think it works here, many disagree. The film making is top notch, all the acting too. Most everything from cinematography to wardrobe is as good as it gets. Were this film to have a point, it all would have worked together for a powerful addition to the American film atheneum. As it is, it does nothing more than underscore tired stereotypes and leave its audience wondering why so much effort would be put into such depraved proclamations. Perhaps worse, it glorifies the most evil of human intentions.
Can we agree that more is required for a great film then just good film-making? Otherwise, Gigli deserved better treatment. Here, Daniel Day Lewis plays an oil man in the morally corrupt laissez-faire American big business culture (seen it) fighting with a morally corrupt Christian minister (seen it) in a society full of have-nots (seen it) controlled by gilded evil white men (that's new) and everything, eventually, adds up to nothing but gruesome, vivid murders and pointless hatred. Roll credits.
I found the portrayal of the young minister to be particularly vapid. Pastor of "The Church of the Third Revelation"
please. Even the church name is painfully hack. Look, I can handle stock stereotypes, but can anyone in the film industry portray a Christian leader as anything more than a sad, money grubbing miscreant? And how many times are we going to need to see this before it gets tired? Not that any other religion or group could have taken its place. I wonder what the reaction to this film would have been had the Snidely Whiplash minister been portrayed as a Rabbi, and all the Jews in his congregation nothing more than gullible or emotionally weak? Never mind the cartoonish unfairness of it all, don't you think it makes for uninteresting character development? Whatever.
All the "smart" people will go away from this film figuring out that the world is a hopeless dog eat dog jungle. The rest of us will go home and do all the work that holds society together and hope for some other film to take our minds off things like this. 1 out of 10 for a pointless and grotesque story.
Stand-up Comics Take a Stand (1988)
Stand up comedy competition to benefit Cerebral Palsy
This was just a bunch of comedians doing stand up in a competition sub-titled, "The search for Hollywoods hottest new comic." Something like that. This was a benefit to raise money for United Cerebral Palsy. I believe this was the second of 3 or 4 annual televised competitions before the event ran out of steam. It came up during the "comedy boom" years of the late '80's. I'm pretty sure this aired in the U.S. on some crazy cable station like CBN (Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network) as it began to branch out into secular programing. Did they not later become the family channel, which was purchased by ABC? Something like that. At any rate - an interesting show if only to check out some then unknown comics that might be famous now, though I couldn't tell you exactly who the comics were.
Note: This was by no means a "10" as my vote would indicate, but it was also not a 3.5 show, per se. Just thought I would bring the score up to a more reasonable level.
Stalag 17 (1953)
A huge disappointment
How Billy Wilder was able to miss on such a monumental scale is beyond me, but he sure does with Stalag 17. This movie is not a train wreck, but it is a huge disappointment and certainly belongs nowhere on anyone's top anything list. The story is compelling enough. There is a rat in the POW barracks and nobody knows who it is. But any hope this movie has of making it is dashed by cartoon like performances, cliché characters, preposterous situations and eye rolling stupidity throughout. Do not believe the hype. This is not a good film. Some Like It Hot is a good film, The Apartment is a great film, many Wilder films are fantastic, but this... this is not just a strike, it's one of those misses where the batter falls down.
William Holden won the best actor Oscar for his performance as Sefton in this film, and he deserves it, but don't let that fool you. Aside from Holden, Stalag 17 feels more like "Springtime For Hitler".
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Inherit the Wind is to movies what Crispin Glover is to doll heads
Not many people know this, but Stanley Kramer did NOT direct this movie. His name is on the film, but that was merely a marketing ploy drummed up by the executives at United Artists. Inherit the Wind was actually the freshman outing by little known director and circus act promoter J. Worthington "Honest John" Foulfellow. You may know him better as the fox from the Disney movie Pinocchio (1940). Well, apparently one of the producers ran into Foulfellow at Shwab's drug store and, being the sly fox that he is, he convinced U/A to let him direct this film. Initial testing showed that people had an aversion to seeing a film directed by an animated fox, so Kramer's name was added as director.
With this is mind, it is much easier to enjoy the movie Inherit the Wind, taking it as a window into the cunning mind of a erudite swindler. At face value, one might consider the cartoonish behavior of the characters in this movie to be absurd, but when you realize Inherit the Wind was directed by a cartoon character, the movie suddenly makes perfect sense. As I understand it, the entire cast was originally supposed to be played by animated personalities, but when Bugs Bunny was held up by his contract at Warner Bros., Spencer Tracy was brought in to play the Henry Drummond role, and the decision was made to go with a human cast. I think this was a good choice. It gives the movie a much more ironic and paradoxical feel. Note the torch wielding peasants that want to lynch the "free thinking" teacher and picture a scene from Foghorn Leghorn and the barnyard dog, and you get the picture.
To me, the sheer genius of Honest John's work are the empirical aesthetic devices he employs to counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor. The movie is obviously mocking propaganda and how gullible those who think they are smarter than others can become. Yet if you are not careful, you will fall precisely into that trap, intuitively thinking the dialog is hack and the characters are cliché and formulaic. Another brilliant trap set by Foulfellow is the lack of historic accuracy in the film, as if to say, "The very premise this film is built upon is hype". Indeed, if one is not careful one can even walk away from this film thinking it completely sucks. If that be the case, all I can say is I pity you, you silly gullible philistine.
The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation (2005)
An extremely good piece of propaganda
This so called documentary highlights a new technique in revisionist history. It is one of the smartest films I have ever seen, but I say that in a bad way. It seems hippies have discovered they need not run from their failures, but, rather, just embrace them. Though I don't mean to grant significance to this project beyond what it possesses, I would like to warn people that this film is nothing more than thinly veiled propaganda.
First and foremost, 'The 60's: The Years That Shaped a Generation' is not about the decade the 60's. That is the first deception. But if you titled your film "Hippies: The People That Really Weren't That Bad" someone might think you have a bias. This is a film about hippies and, more broadly, the counter-culture revolution. Virtually nothing from '60's popular culture is discussed. Most of the film centers on the sociopolitical events that took place from 1967 to 1974. If you want to call that "the 60's" then so be it.
So far as I can tell, here is the thrust of this project: We hippies have a dilemma - When people look back on our legacy it is fraught with scandal, overt drug use, lawlessness, irresponsibility, reckless sexual behavior, snotty faced rebelliousness, naïveté and an overall creepiness factor. How do you 'spin' that? An epiphany is had. Why waste energy lying and running from your failures when you can just embrace them! Sure, we did drugs like Pez candy, but they were new and we were experimenting with everything 'new'. Sure, we behaved like dogs sexually, but we were shedding the ages of blind conformity. Sure, we had a complete and total disregard for authority, the same authority we now force others to accept as unmitigated truths, but
did I mention Nixon yet? Here's the game plan with our project. First call it a documentary. People trust documentaries. Second, we tell people it's about "the 60's". That will cloak it in history, not opinion and sermonizing. Along those lines, we'll populate the movie with historians on our side and on their side we'll have villainized pundits. Third, we DO point out the faults of the hippies, but don't dwell on them. Just brush against them briefly in the context of history, and don't assign any culpability. Then quickly compare that to the faults of those we disagreed with and make sure we do assign culpability on their part (never mind the fact that most of those faults occurred in a different decade, apparently morality isn't the only ambiguous truth to hippies). Lastly, we leave open to speculation the failures of our efforts. We didn't all burn out on drugs and eventually need to "conform" in order to function on this planet. Who told you that? No, the problem was two of our leaders were assassinated and that took the wind out of our sails. Who would do such a thing? (if there's anything people love more than a spicy documentary, it's a good conspiracy!) It is worth noting that the murderers of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and their motives are not even mentioned. The film also does not mention why, with the wind gone from their sails, the hippies proceeded to have the worlds largest orgy on a farm in New York just a year later. Was that a Irish wake of sorts? Nor does it mention how their flaccid sails relate to the plethora of failed attempts on the part of the counter-culture to achieve "new freedom" in the years to follow. The wind has gone out of the sails and it's not our fault. In closing, we wrap every thing up with a wedding reception pass-the-mike for blessings, "look at all the great things us hippies have done with our lives". So, in a way, one could say the message is 'it doesn't matter how great the institution you tear down, what matters is do you drink organic shade grown cappuccinos'?
Many conservative icons appear in this film, and I can't say I blame them for taking the opportunity - who wouldn't want to give their opinion on what went wrong with the hippies - but how could you not know that the film makers of a PBS documentary on the '60's are NOT going to try to make conservatives look irrelevant, or worse? As such, all conservative comments are used to underscore the absurdity of a contrary view. Absurdities such as Robert Bork saying that rock music fueled the rebellion. He's such a cretin! Right out of Reefer Madness I tell you! Never mind that earlier in the documentary those on the left were bragging about how rock music fueled their rebellion. Hypocrisy must be relative, too.
The film itself is well made and, I think, very interesting. The producers are masterful in there imagery and the flow of the "story", however, I might recommend spending a few more dollars at the stock footage library. I saw some clips, notably, a police line advancing towards a rioting crowd, as many as three times for various emphasis. My criticisms of this film are not having to do with it being poorly made. As most reviews focus on this quality of a film, this review may seem a bit unfair. But with the making of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, et. al., I think people are beginning to realize there is more to movie making than just entertainment. No doubt there were many slick and "poignant" films made by the Nazi party, should their misrepresentations be ignored?
Robot Bastard! (2002)
Like watching money burn
Not cool, not funny, not stylish and not exciting. Why people pour so much time and energy into projects like this is beyond me. It served no purpose as a pilot, surely nobody would care to watch this, even on the Sci-Fi channel. There was nothing to "pilot". If it were funny, the crappy production value would be excusable. If it were stylish, it might be fun. If it had any kind of character development then someone might give a damn. This was a waste of time through and through. And to think, some guy probably took a year out of his life to get this made. If you want to watch a poorly made cardboard robot walk around for 17 minutes, than knock yourself out, otherwise watch the trailer on youtube and you've seen the film.
Surely the energy put into this project could have been better spent on a decent plasma TV or at least a real robot of some kind, one of those vacuum cleaner types perhaps.
The Green Mile (1999)
Partonizing and overwrought, but still a must see.
There are several things that bothered me about this film and I will get into that in a second, but first I must say The Green Mile has some of the best acting you will ever see in a movie. Tom Hanks has a special ability to make nothing seem like something. I often wonder if even HE knows what he's doing. You don't really notice it while he's doing it, but after the film find yourself feeling like you know the guy. Unlike being shocked by the sheer magnetism of a Marlin Brando, or the energy of Robert DeNiro, Hanks wins you over by appearing NOT to act. It's like you're watching a video of yourself going through what he is doing. Like you have lived it. Another special treat is gentle giant Michael Clarke Duncan playing the healer John Coffey. Such tenderness and control while holding back a flood of emotion, all without slipping into bathos is a rare thing indeed. Duncan should have won an academy award. A mesmerizing performance. Michael Jeter also turns in a fine performance as the Cajun convict Eduard Delacroix. Bonnie Hunt was doing such a good job I didn't even recognize her at first. The rest of the cast is all well chosen. Excellent performances all around.
My criticisms of the film are brief. I only mention them because were it not for these simple faults, I feel The Green Mile has a shot at the "greatest film of all time" title, and yes, I know that's saying a lot.
1) The movie was too long. There comes a time when you need to pick a storyline from the book and then throw the book out. Everything this film said and did could have easily been done in 2 hours and it would have had more impact. It also would have left the audience wanting more, like Apocalypse Now, vs. A.N. Redux.
2) I found the foul language and adult situations to be distracting from the topic and genre. A more traditional approach here would have made for a more timeless and accessible work. The language was too "on the head" (see point 4) 3) I didn't like the special effect of how John Coffey heals. It was too... Steven Kingish? A more subtle approach would have been more thought provoking, which leads me to my last point...
4) The movie frequently tries too hard. It has 17 endings, like with Shawshank, it has endless underscoring of its messages and points, it rambles, it over-explains, it hits the nail on the head -- twice, just in case you missed the first one. It would take pages to explain this point in detail, so suffice to say, if you agree, you know what I am talking about, and if you disagree, you will love this film all the more.
I know this is sacrilege to filmmakers and impossible, but I would love to see a highly edited version of this film. Take out the healing effects. Cut the modern day beginning and ending off. Remove the language (it's a cruel world, okay okay, I get it), cut massive amounts of build up and redundancies. Let us just watch those incredible performances tell this beautiful story and most of all, let us think. We are not all that stupid, Frankly.
Queen for a Day (2000)
short film with a humorous idea that fizzles out
Queen for a day is a 3 minute short, (40 seconds of credits at end, tt 3:40) about a guy at a gym that is a personal trainer to beautiful women. I must first say if this is writer/director Greg Coolidge first project, I am impressed. Production wise it is very slick and professional looking. I caught it on the Atom Films website. The acting is good, the camera, sound and lighting is excellent, everything works, except the execution of the idea. It is hard to say this is actually a spoiler for two reasons: 1) it is easy to see the premise of the joke from the very beginning, so the reveal is not news and 2) the joke really has an anti-punch line, which is why the short doesn't work.
spoilers:
It starts off with a funny, albeit juvenile premise; a gay guy is a trainer to beautiful women. This puts the women at ease and allows him to do all sorts of gratuitous fondling of them. It is soon revealed that, of course, he is not gay, but is working a scam. This is where the film falls apart. It ends with all the people around him actually being gay, which, aside from being implausible, is a sort of anti-punch line that leaves you with a "so what?" feeling. There is a rule in comedy which says "do not block", in other words, go with the idea, do not stop it. I suppose some gays may find the ending cute, but it certainly is not funny. It is a pity because the set-up was pretty strong. A little more work on the script and perhaps they could have come up with something worth watching. As it stands it is a pointless short with some humorous moments.
Midnight Run (1988)
Schizophrenic, but a must see
Midnight Run has every potential to be the best film ever made. It has a solid plot, a magnificent cast, superb dialog and a budget to back all this up. Unfortunately, it is directed by a schizophrenic named Martin Brest. I have no idea if Martin is actually insane or if he just acts like it, but it makes little difference as his movies all turn out the same: a good idea with good casting ruined by stupid decisions. He's like a mad scientist that builds a space ship, but then wants to fly it to Oregon to build an Indian casino.
This is a frustrating movie as it is always so close to being brilliant, then *POW* out of nowhere, and for no reason, it will turn into the Dukes of Hazard. This is the only film I can think of that I would love to see remade with its original cast. For the latter it is a must see. I can't remember liking DeNiro more than I did in this film, Grodin gives the best performance of his career and is just fantastic, Farina is perfect, Joey Pants is hilarious (I love Pants in almost everything he does mostly because I get the feeling he's not really acting).
When the movie works, it relies heavily on the talents of it's actors and the scripts great dialog. It's a very clever and smartly written comedy, but also a keen study of human emotions and relationships. This is probably at it's height in a heart wrenching scene between De Niro and his "abandoned" 14 year old daughter, a small part played perfectly by Danielle DuClos. The film rapidly deteriorates, however, every time it tries to pick up the action. Cue the goofy b-movie chase music, cue the bullets that just barely miss hundreds of times, cue the national guard sized force that just can't seem to get the job done. Cue dozens of eye rolling clichés and impossible escapes. Martin.... why? I firmly believe that if rather than the cartoonish action sequences, the film would have delved into a gritty, perhaps even frightening realism it could have been AFI top 100 material. The talent was certainly all there.
There is no getting around the bad parts of this film, they are too intertwined to avoid, but do not let that stop you from seeing it. The scenes with De Niro and Grodin (et. al.) are so good it should be on everyone's must see list.
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Tedious and not funny at all
This film is not funny. You may say you enjoy it, you may sy you love it, it may even make you happy, but it is most certainly not funny. I enjoy comedy of all kinds. From Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and The Marx Brothers to Woody Allen, Niel Simon and The Farrelly Brothers. I like Monty Python and I like Martin & Lewis. I LOVE comedy. There is nothing about this film I did not "get". There is nothing to "get". This film is simply not funny. I am not stupid, a snob, a stick in the mud, jaded, too modern, too old fashioned, crude, juvenile or have no sense of humor. It is not my problem, it is the film's. It is not funny. Trust me. If you have not seen this film you are not missing anything. It plays like a 3 hour version of Mama's Family with massive stunt casting.
I am not here to disrespect anyone or ruffle the feathers of those who say they like this film, I just want to warn anyone who thinks they are going to see a comedy. This is not a comedy. Rent The Dish or The God's Must Be Crazy if you are looking for a new comedy to add to your list. Stay away from this film unless you enjoy not laughing. If you have a rib injury and need to avoid laughing, this is the film for you. If you are looking to laugh, you will feel like a tourist in Times Square playing 3 card monty. As Foghorn Leghorn would say: You'll, I say You'll get robbed, son.
I remember seeing a TV movie when I was young that I thought was hilarious, and then seeing the same movie when I was an adult. I was shocked at how unfunny the film was. Perhaps that is the phenomenon with this film, people saw it when they were young and remember it as a film they liked, but have not seen it since. I suppose it is possible to actually think this film IS funny, but that would only shed light on the infantile sense of humor that some people have. I can imagine showing this film to an audience of people that have never seen it and watching it illicit an uproar of cat calls and boo's.
To all who tell me not to judge what is funny and what is not, I sentence you to watch It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Good acting, bad script.
Bottle Rocket is not a bad film, but it is a disappointing film. The movie is solidly made; good directing, especially considering this was Wes Anderson's freshman outing, excellent acting all around, especially Owen Wilson in his screen debut, and a nice look, visually, but it suffers from a pointless script. The dialog is fine and frequently fun and quirky, but the entire script was pointless and meandering. It had no direction or objective and had constant implausible situations (e.g.) they allow civilians into the "yard" to visit prisoners in a state pen? It would have been nice to have spent more time developing the characters and finding out why they are the way they are, the thing that makes The Godfather so superb. I understand that this is a film about slackers, but the stakes were so low and so poorly executed that I didn't follow it, didn't buy it or didn't care. The movie The Full Monty had a similar basis and executed the idea superbly, so I don't feel it was that I didn't "get it". It is a pity because this movie has real potential. It is a fairly good watch so far as it is original and witty, but do not expect to follow any type of cohesive story, because there isn't one. Slight spoiler: Like the subplot of the lead's affair with the maid, it is beautifully executed, but it goes nowhere.
After watching Bottle Rocket I was left feeling like I had just eaten just one small hamburger at a drive in. It was good, but where's the beef?