52 Films in 2021
When I sit down to watch something in the evening, I’m normally faced with a choice. Part of me wants to watch something quote-unquote “good.” Hundreds of classic films are at my finger tips every time I sit down on my couch at the end of the day. I want to watch films that said something unique about the human condition or about the time period that they were created. The other part of me, however, doesn’t want to think. That part of my brain knows that watching these “good” movies requires more attention than another episode of Shameless, and well, that part of my brain is lazy. And so far it usually wins.
The biggest barriers for me has always been the anxiety of choosing the right film for a given evening. When I have to make a choice in the moment, it’s easiest to just say, “Nah, I’ll watch one of those good movies tomorrow when I’m more up for it.” To counter this, I’ve made a list of 52 films I am going to watch over the next 52 weeks. Now the choice is already made!
The Fine Print
- Outside of the first and last film, the choices are in no particular order. I thought about ordering them to match the seasons throughout the year but that would ultimately be beyond my scope here. I’m not trying to watch the right film every week. Rather, I’m just watching a “good” film every week.
- Many of the films below also have video essays or interviews about them linked as well. There is some amazing analysis on YouTube and I actually discovered many of the films on this list from YouTube channels like NerdWriter and Lessons From a Screenplay. I’ve watched about half of the videos I linked to - the rest I just did a quick search on YouTube and linked one of the videos that looked interesting in the results.
- The summaries for each film were scraped from Wikipedia using a nifty little Google Sheets formula.
- I’m going to try and be in the right mindset when watching these movies. All of these movies are considered some of the best movies of all time which puts a lot of pressure on liking them and “getting” them. It’s easy to start asking questions like “what does this mean” or “what super deep thing is the director trying to say here” while watching the movie. Some movies may have those deeper meanings but at the end of the day, I’m pretty sure that the writers and directors behind these movies just wanted to tell really good stories. So while I watch these, I’m going to do my best to turn off the part of my brain that wants to “get” these movies and just buy in to the stories and atmospheres that the movies create.
Films
Week 1
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American political comedy-drama film directed by Frank Capra, starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart, and featuring Claude Rains and Edward Arnold. The film is about a newly appointed United States Senator who fights against a corrupt political system, and was written by Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Fosters unpublished story “The Gentleman from Montana”. The film was controversial when it was first released, but successful at the box office, and it made Stewart a major star. It was also loosely based on the life of Montana U.S. Senator Burton Wheeler, who underwent a similar experience when he was investigating the Warren Harding administration.
Week 2
The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 American film noir directed and scripted by John Huston in his directorial debut, based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. It stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade and Mary Astor as his femme fatale client. Gladys George, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet co-star, with the last appearing in his film debut. The story follows a San Francisco private detective and his dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers, all of whom are competing to obtain a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette.
Week 3
Magnolia is a 1999 American epic psychological drama film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film stars an ensemble cast including Jeremy Blackman, Tom Cruise, Melinda Dillon, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, Jason Robards, and Melora Walters, and is a mosaic of interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.
Magnolia: Reconciling with the Past | Video Essay
Week 4
Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director who suffers from stifled creativity as he attempts to direct an epic science fiction film. It is shot in black and white by cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo and features a soundtrack by Nino Rota, with costume and set designs by Piero Gherardi.
Scorsese on Fellini on Charlie Rose #2
Week 5
The Searchers is a 1956 American Technicolor Vista Vision Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, set during the Texas–Indian wars, and starring John Wayne as a middle-aged Civil War veteran who spends years looking for his abducted niece (Natalie Wood), accompanied by his adoptive nephew (Jeffrey Hunter).
Week 6
In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong romantic drama film written, produced, and directed by Wong Kar-wai. Its original Chinese title means “Flowery Years”. It tells the story of a man (played by Tony Leung) and a woman (Maggie Cheung) whose spouses have an affair together and who slowly develop feelings for each other.
In The Mood For Love: Frames Within Frames
Week 7
The China Syndrome is a 1979 American drama neo-noir thriller film directed by James Bridges and written by Bridges, Mike Gray, and T. S. Cook. The film stars Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas (who also produced), Scott Brady, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Richard Herd, and Wilford Brimley. It follows a television reporter and her cameraman who discover safety coverups at a nuclear power plant. “China syndrome” is a fanciful term that describes a fictional result of a nuclear meltdown, where reactor components melt through their containment structures and into the underlying earth, “all the way to China”.
Week 8
Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is loosely based on Philip K. Dicks 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work at space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.
Blade Runner: The Other Side of Modernity
Week 9
The film stars Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman, Barbara Stanwyck as a provocative housewife who wishes her husband were dead, and Edward G. Robinson as a claims adjuster whose job is to find phony claims. The term “double indemnity” refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout in rare cases when the death is accidental, such as falling off a train.
Week 10
Hoop Dreams is a 1994 American documentary film directed by Steve James, and produced by Frederick Marx, James, and Peter Gilbert, with Kartemquin Films. It follows the story of two African-American high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players.
Week 11
Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American courtroom drama crime film produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Wendell Mayes was based on the 1958 novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver. Voelker based the novel on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defense attorney.
Anatomy of Anatomy of a Murder
Week 12
Some Like It Hot is a 1959 American black-and-white romantic comedy film directed and produced by Billy Wilder, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. The supporting cast includes George Raft, Pat O’Brien, Joe E. Brown, Joan Shawlee, Grace Lee Whitney, and Nehemiah Persoff. The screenplay by Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond is based on a screenplay by Robert Thoeren and Michael Logan from the 1935 French film Fanfare of Love. The film is about two musicians who dress in drag in order to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed committing a crime (inspired by the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre).
Week 13
At the 42nd Academy Awards, the film won three awards: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture. It has since been placed 36th on the American Film Institutes list of the 100 greatest American films of all time, and 43rd on its 2007 updated version.
Week 14
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, more commonly known simply as Dr. Strangelove, is a 1964 black comedy film that satirizes the Cold War fears of a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. The film was directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick and stars Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, and Slim Pickens. Production took place in the United Kingdom. The film is loosely based on Peter Georges thriller novel Red Alert (1958).
Dr. Strangelove: The Hilarity of Nuclear Annihilation
Week 15
Cléo from 5 to 7 (French: Cléo de 5 à 7 [kle.o də sɛ̃k a sɛt]) is a 1962 French Left Bank film written and directed by Agnès Varda.[1] The story starts with a young singer, Florence “Cléo” Victoire, at 5pm on June 21, as she waits until 6:30pm to hear the results of a medical test that will possibly confirm a diagnosis of cancer. The film is known for its handling of several of the themes of existentialism, including discussions of mortality, the idea of despair, and leading a meaningful life. The film has a strong feminine viewpoint belonging to French feminism and raises questions about how women are perceived, especially in French society. Mirrors appear frequently to symbolize self-obsession, which Cléo embodies.
Week 16
The Game is a 1997 American thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, and produced by Propaganda Films and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment. It tells the story of a wealthy investment banker who is given a mysterious gift by his brother - participation in a game that integrates in strange ways with his everyday life. As the lines between the banker’s real life and the game become more uncertain, hints of a large conspiracy become apparent.
The Game: David Fincher & The Lonely Protagonist
Week 17
The title in Chinese means “one by one” (meaning “one after another”). When written in vertical alignment, the two strokes resemble the character for “two”: (二). The film’s theme centers around the emotional struggles of an engineer named NJ (played by Wu Nien-jen) and three generations of his middle-class Taiwanese family who reside in Taipei.
Week 18
Tokyo Story (東京物語, Tōkyō Monogatari) is a 1953 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and starring Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama. It tells the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children. The film contrasts the behavior of their children, who are too busy to pay them much attention, with that of their widowed daughter-in-law, who treats them with kindness.
Week 19
Do the Right Thing is a 1989 American comedy-drama film produced, written, and directed by Spike Lee. It stars Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, and Samuel L. Jackson, and is the feature film debut of Martin Lawrence and Rosie Perez. The story explores a Brooklyn neighborhood’s simmering racial tension, which culminates in tragedy and violence on a hot summer day.
Week 20
It Happened One Night is a 1934 pre-Code American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite (Claudette Colbert) tries to get out from under her father’s thumb and falls in love with a roguish reporter (Clark Gable). The plot is based on the August 1933 short story “Night Bus” by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which provided the shooting title. Classified as a “pre-Code” production, the film is among the last romantic comedies created before the MPPDA began rigidly enforcing the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code in July 1934. It Happened One Night was released just four months prior to that enforcement.
1934: It Happened One Night - Defining the Screwball Comedy
Week 21
A Separation (Persian: جدایی نادر از سیمین Jodaí-e Nadér az Simín, The Separation of Nader from Simin) is a 2011 Iranian drama film written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, starring Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Sareh Bayat, and Sarina Farhadi. It focuses on an Iranian middle-class couple who separate, the disappointment and desperation suffered by their daughter due to the egotistical disputes and separation of her parents, and the conflicts that arise when the husband hires a lower-classcare giver for his elderly father, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
Week 22
Raging Bull is a 1980 American biographical sports drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, produced by Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler and adapted by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin from Jake LaMottas 1970 memoir Raging Bull: My Story. The film, distributed by United Artists, stars Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta, an Italian-American middleweight boxer whose self-destructive and obsessive rage, sexual jealousy, and animalistic appetite destroyed his relationship with his wife and family. Also featured in the film are Joe Pesci as Joey, LaMotta’s well-intentioned brother and manager who tries to help Jake battle his inner demons, and Cathy Moriarty as his wife. Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, and Frank Vincent all play supporting roles in the film.
Week 23
The largely fictitious plot is based on the building in 1942 of one of the railway bridges over the Mae Klongriver—renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s—at a place called Tha Ma Kham, five kilometres from the Thai town of Kanchanaburi.
Watch Bridge Over River Kwai Like Ron Swanson
Week 24
La Dolce Vita (Italian pronunciation: [la ˈdoltʃe ˈviːta]; Italian for “the sweet life” or “the good life”) is a 1960 comedy-drama film directed and co-written by Federico Fellini. The film follows Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a journalist writing for gossip magazines, over seven days and nights on his journey through the “sweet life” of Rome in a fruitless search for love and happiness. The screenplay, co-written by Fellini and three other screenwriters, can be divided into a prologue, seven major episodes interrupted by an intermezzo, and an epilogue, according to the most common interpretation.[5]
‘La Dolce Vita’ | Critics’ Picks | The New York Times
Week 25
The film stars William Holden as Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a former silent-film star who draws him into her demented fantasy world, where she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen. Erich von Stroheim plays Max von Mayerling, her devoted butler, and Nancy Olson, Jack Webb, Lloyd Gough, and Fred Clark appear in supporting roles. Director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper play themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent-film actors Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner, and Anna Q. Nilsson.
Parasite vs. Sunset Boulevard - The Disillusionment Arc
Week 26
Children of Men is a 2006 science fiction action-thriller film co-written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The screenplay, based on P. D. James 1992 novel The Children of Men, was credited to five writers, with Clive Owen making uncredited contributions. The film takes place in 2027, when two
decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. Asylum seekers seek sanctuary
in the United Kingdom, where they are subjected to detention and refoulement by the government. Owen plays civil servant Theo Faron, who must help refugee Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) escape the chaos. Children of Men also stars Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pam Ferris, and Charlie Hunnam.
Children of Men: Don’t Ignore The Background
Week 27
Heaven Can Wait is a 1943 Technicolor American comedy film produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. The screenplay was by Samson Raphaelson based on the play Birthday by Leslie Bush-Fekete. The music score was by Alfred Newman and the cinematography by Edward Cronjager.
Week 28
Dial M for Murder is a 1954 American crime mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, Anthony Dawson, and John Williams. Both the screenplay and the successful stage play on which it was based were written by English playwright Frederick Knott. The play premiered in 1952 on BBC Television, before being performed on stage in the same year in Londons West End in June, and then New York’sBroadway in October. Originally intended to be shown in dual-strip polarized 3-D, the film played in most theatres in ordinary 2-D due to the loss of interest in the 3-D process (the projection of which was difficult and error-prone) by the time of its release. The film earned an estimated $2.7 million in North American box office sales in 1954.
Week 29
Notorious is a 1946 American spyfilm noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation. It was shot in late 1945 and early 1946, and was released by RKO Radio Pictures in August 1946.
John Bailey on the Most Famous Shot in NOTORIOUS
Week 30
Spirited Away (Japanese: 千と千尋の神隠し, Hepburn: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, ‘Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away’) is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Tohokushinsha Film, and Mitsubishi.[6] The film stars Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takeshi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijō, Takehiko Ono, and Bunta Sugawara. Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro Ogino (Hiiragi), a 10-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighbourhood, enters the world of Kami (spirits of Japanese Shinto folklore). After her parents are turned into pigs by the witch Yubaba (Natsuki), Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba’s bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.
My Love Letter to Spirited Away
Week 31
This Sporting Life is a 1963 British kitchen sink drama film written and directed by Lindsay Anderson. Based on the 1960 novel of the same name by David Storey, which won the 1960 Macmillan Fiction Award, it recounts the story of a rugby league footballer, Frank Machin, in Wakefield, a mining town in Yorkshire, whose romantic life is not as successful as his sporting life. Storey, a former professional rugby league footballer, also wrote the screenplay.
Week 32
The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene, and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Set in postwar Vienna, the film centres on American Holly Martins (Cotten), who arrives in the city to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime (Welles), only to learn that Lime has died. Viewing his death as suspicious, Martins elects to stay in Vienna and investigate the matter.
Week 33
Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noirmystery film directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. The film was inspired by the California Water Wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century, by which Los Angeles interests secured water rights in the Owens Valley. The Robert Evans production, released by Paramount Pictures, was the director’s last film in the United States and features many elements of film noir, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part psychological drama.
Week 34
Roma is a 2018 Mexican drama film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also produced, shot, and co-edited it. Set in 1970 and 1971, Roma follows the life of a live-in housekeeper of a middle-class family, as a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón’s upbringing in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. The film stars Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira.
Week 35
A Serious Man is a 2009 black comedy-drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1967, the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Minnesota Jewish man whose life crumbles both professionally and personally, leading him to questions about his faith.
The film attracted a positive critical response, including a Golden Globe Award nomination for Stuhlbarg, a place on both the American Film Institute’s and National Board of Review’s Top 10 Film Lists of 2009, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Week 36
The film documents events in Jackson Heights including “a Muslim school, a Jewish center, a meeting of gay and transgender people, a City Council office and the local headquarters of Make the Road New York, an activist organization dedicated to Latino and working-class people.”
Week 37
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and star. The picture was Welles’s first feature film. Considered by many critics, filmmakers, and fans to be the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane was voted as such in five consecutive British Film Institute Sight & Sound polls of critics, and it topped the American Film Institute’s 100 Years … 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update. Nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles. Citizen Kane is particularly praised for Gregg Toland’s cinematography, Robert Wise’s editing, Bernard Herrmann’s music, and its narrative structure, all of which have been considered innovative and precedent-setting.
1941: Citizen Kane: What Makes A Masterpiece
Week 38
The film takes place during a hot summer in 1958 at a seaside town on the Inland Sea. A travelling theatre troupe arrives by ship, headed by the troupe’s lead actor and owner, Komajuro (Ganjirō Nakamura). The rest of the troupe goes around the town to publicise their appearance.
Roger Ebert on Ozu’s Floating Weeds
Week 39
Seven (stylized as SE7EN) is a 1995 American neo-noir psychologicalcrime thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey, R. Lee Ermey and John C. McGinley. The film tells the story of David Mills (Pitt), a detective who partners with the retiring William Somerset (Freeman) to track down a serial killer (Spacey) who uses the seven deadly sins as a motif in his murders.
Week 40
Strangers on a Train is a 1951 American psychological thriller film noir produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in the autumn of 1950 and released by Warner Bros. on June 30, 1951.
Week 41
Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British epichistorical drama film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel, through his British company Horizon Pictures, and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film stars Peter O’Toole as T.E Lawrence with Alec Guinness playing Prince Faisal. The film also stars Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, and Arthur Kennedy. The screenplay was written by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson.
Lawrence of Arabia: A Retrospective
Week 42
The African Queen is a 1951 British-American adventure film adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. The film was directed by John Huston and produced by Sam Spiegel and John Woolf. The screenplay was adapted by James Agee, John Huston, John Collier and Peter Viertel. It was photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff and has a music score by Allan Gray. The film stars Humphrey Bogart (who won the Academy Award for Best Actor — his only Oscar), and Katharine Hepburn with Robert Morley, Peter Bull, Walter Gotell, Richard Marner and Theodore Bikel.
Week 43
Spartacus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick,[3] written by Dalton Trumbo, and based on the 1951 novel of the same title by Howard Fast. It is inspired by the life story of Spartacus, the leader of a slave revolt in antiquity, and the events of the Third Servile War. It stars Kirk Douglas in the title role, Laurence Olivier as Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, Peter Ustinov, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus, John Gavin as Julius Caesar, Jean Simmons as Varinia, Charles Laughton as Sempronius Gracchus, and Tony Curtis as Antoninus.
Week 44
The Hustler is a 1961 American CinemaScopedrama film directed by Robert Rossen from Walter Teviss 1959 novel of the same name, adapted for the screen by Rossen and Sidney Carroll. It tells the story of small-time pool hustler “Fast” Eddie Felson and his desire to break into the “major league” of professional hustling and high-stakes wagering by high-rollers that follows it. He throws his raw talent and ambition up against the best player in the country, seeking to best the legendary pool player “Minnesota Fats”. After initially losing to Fats and getting involved with unscrupulous manager Bert Gordon, Eddie returns to try again, but only after paying a terrible personal price.
Week 45
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot follows the generally harmless misadventures of a lovable, gauche
Frenchman, Monsieur Hulot (played by Tati himself), as he joins the “newly emerging holiday-taking classes” for a summer vacation at a modest seaside resort. The film affectionately lampoons several hidebound elements of French political and economic classes, from chubby capitalists and self-important Marxist intellectuals to petty proprietors and drab dilettantes, most of whom find it nearly impossible to free themselves, even temporarily, from their rigid social roles in order to relax and enjoy life.
Jacques Tati - Where to Find Visual Comedy
Week 46
12 Angry Men is a 1957 American courtroom drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, adapted from a 1954 teleplay of the same name by Reginald Rose.The film tells the story of a jury of 12 men as they deliberate the conviction or acquittal of an 18-year old defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt, forcing the jurors to question their morals and values.
12 Angry Men - A Lesson in Staging
Week 47
The Tree of Life is a 2011 American experimentalepicdrama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and featuring a cast of Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Jessica Chastain, and Tye Sheridan in his debut feature film role. The film chronicles the origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man’s childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas, interspersed with imagery of the origins of the known universe and the inception of life on Earth.
David Fincher and Christopher Nolan Talk About “The Tree of Life”
Week 48
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epicscience fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The screenplay was written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and was inspired by Clarke’s 1951 short story “The Sentinel” and other short stories by Clarke. A novel released after the film’s premiere was in part written concurrently with the screenplay. The film, which follows a voyage to Jupiter with the sentient computer HAL after the discovery of an alien monolith affecting human evolution, deals with themes of existentialism, human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
Christopher Nolan Introduces 2001: A Space Odyssey
Week 49
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
In 2007, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ | Critics’ Picks | The New York Times
Week 50
In 2003, Young Mr. Lincoln was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
Week 51
The major themes of the film include learning how to live, the inefficiency of bureaucracy, and decaying family life in Japan, which have been the subject of analysis by academics and critics. The film has received widespread critical acclaim, and in Japan won awards for Best Film at the Kinema Junpo and Mainichi Film Awards. It was remade as a television film in 2007.
Ikiru (1952) The Human Spirit | Film Analysis
Week 52
It’s a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas, family fantasy, drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet The Greatest Gift, which Philip Van Doren Stern self-published in 1943 and is in turn loosely based on the Charles Dickens novel “A Christmas Carol”. The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his personal dreams, in order to help others in his community, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George how he, George, has touched the lives of others and how different life would be for his wife Mary and his community of Bedford Falls if he had not been born.
It’s A Wonderful Life: Individual vs. Community