Jonas Ferry’s blog

It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946). After a startling space animation cooler than the introduction to Superman Returns, an angel gets a job to earn his wings. He’s supposed to help a self-sacrificing man find happiness, and finds him at an all-time low during Christmas. James Stewart is good enough, and the film actually works until they get carried away towards the end and showers the viewer in melodrama. [6/10]

King Kong (Peter Jackson, 2005). A couple of former apes travel to a remote island and bring back a current ape. The big ape runs amok in the big city and climbs a skyscraper with a woman in one hand. That’s the whole story. For some reason Peter Jackson thought it wise to add a lot of shots where the ape wrestles dinosaurs, where the hairless apes fight giant bugs and so on. This did nothing to improve the experience from the original from 1933. [6/10]

The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927). A man moves in with a family while the city is plagued by a killer of blonde women. The man behaves in strange ways around the blonde daughter of the family, and goes out late at night for unknown reasons. Soon they suspect him of the murders. A great silent film by Hitchcock. Some of the special effects are really cool, like a see-through floor, and the suspense from his later films is already present. [9/10]

The Devil’s Backbone (original title: El Espinazo del diablo) (Guillermo del Toro, 2005). A young boy moves to an orphanage and realizes it’s haunted. I expected more from the premise, but was somewhat disappointed in the actual execution. [7/10]

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946). A crime is committed with two boys and a girl involved. When they grow up she marries one of them, but is drawn to the other. A nice love triangle, with great characters. Martha is a true femme fatale in this noir, as she’s constantly changing her allegiances and her story whenever it suits her. [8/10]

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). A down-and-out private detective in a future city is hired to find a bunch of renegade replicants, artificial people. The beginning was kind of lame, as I don’t think you should ever need to have a introduction text in a film. The music is very suitable, and the film is a good example of science fiction that’s about ideas and feelings as much as special effects. [9/10]

Harrison Ford as Deckard in Blade Runner (1982).

Look at Me (original title: Comme une image) (Agnès Jaoui, 2004). A French author is surrounded by people that want to be noticed, but he’s not able to see anyone but himself. A feel-good film that’s still watchable, maybe in part because I really like films about writers. [8/10]

Kes (Ken Loach, 1969). A young boy adopts a pet falcon, and is more comfortable with that than with people. You get a glimpse of a life where peoples’ greatest ambition is to work in the local mine and get drunk on weekends, and where people that are different are ridiculed. [8/10]

It’s All About Love (Thomas Vinterberg, 2003). Something is killing people around the world in this film set in the near future, but the focus of the film is on a relationship on the brink of ending. In some ways the film is really strange, but if you accept it as a fantasy it’s not that weird. I’ve seen it before. [9/10]

Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965). A secret agent is on some kind of mission in a dystopian future city called Alphaville. The plot is never clear and the characters always bizarre, and you can really tell Godard was inspired by 1984. [7/10]

Patton (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970). The war-obsessed general Patton does everything to get to command forces in battle during World War II, but have a hard time dealing with politics. It’s nice to watch someone so completely enjoying what he’s doing, and it’s fun to see Patton as an example of the warrior poet. His poems are available online if you search for them. [8/10]

The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy, 1985). A man wakes up a finds himself being the last person on Earth. This is science fiction without the ray-guns and the furry bears on forest planets, but leaves it ambiguous whether things are actually taking place or if it’s a symbolic struggle between the main character’s masculine and feminine side. [8/10]

Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984). A young delinquent is tricked into “repossessing” cars and selling them on, but it all turns dangerous when a car with a deadly government experiment in the trunk is stolen. I liked the nice 80s feel and the story is good up to a point, but when it turns out that the fool no one listens to is right after all it all feels a bit obvious. [7/10]

Flightplan (Robert Schwentke, 2005). An airplane engineer loses her daughter on a plane, and no one seems to believe the daughter was even on the plane. It’s nice to see a competent female engineer as the main character, but the story seems to go in straight lines between each turn which makes you just sit back and await the next twist. [6/10]

Kontroll (Nimród Antal, 2003). A bunch of subway ticket inspector in Budapest tries to compete against each other, fall in love and catch a killer. I like these urban-mythic films, this one with a Lynch-like ending that I feel I should give more thought, and the setting for this film is just spectacular. [8/10]

The Five Senses (Jeremy Podeswa, 1999). Intertwined stories each related to a different sense, mostly about different forms of love and how to get it. Films with multiple interconnected stories sometimes feel forced, but this one managed to keep them related, but not tie together each different strand. Had the guy from story A met the girl from story B at the end that would’ve dragged the impression down, but The Five Senses avoided that trap. [8/10]

The Godfather: Part III (Francis Ford Coppola, 1990). Michael Corleone are old and his children are adults, but he still has troubles staying legit. This is my least favorite film of the three, but it’s still a masterpiece. [10/10]

Alice (original title: Neco z Alenky) (Jan Svankmajer, 1988). The story of Alice in Wonderland told with a live actor and a lot of animated puppets. This is something to show a kid to scare it like nothing before. The rabbit is scary, just look at the image in Helena’s review, and Alice is really assaulted by these strange creatures. Some say it’s the version closest to the novel, but I haven’t read it. [9/10]

We were also treated to Darkness/Light/Darkness (original title: Tma/Svetlo/Tma) (Svankmajer, 1989) directly after Alice. It’s an animation of formless clay turning into a man. It’s fun. [8/10]

Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005). Classic film noir transported to a present day high school, with everything revolving around bricks that might be worth killing for. This is really, really good. The transition is seamless, and it’s fun to watch the schoolyard tough-guys and the fatales who borrow their parents’ house for parties. But it’s not a comedy, and the themes explored are quite dark. I first read about the film in Judd Karlman’s blog and realized it was something me and Helena couldn’t miss. Judd, among others, noticed the dialog, and since the author/director has put the shooting script online for free you can have a look for yourself. Or better yet, see the film. [9/10]

Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944). A just-married man finds out his aunts have a habit of killing old men. I really didn’t care for the upbeat tempo or Cary Grants silly character, but what saved the film was his nemesis, the unwanted and evil brother Jonathan. [7/10]

Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) and his two aunts from Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).