The 24 FPS Top 100 Films: No. 51

The Page Turner [2006]
Dir: Denis Dercourt

Why is it on the list?
Denis Dercourt's film has been called Hichcockian and, while it's every bit good enough to warrant that comparison, its austere visual style, slow burning thrills, setting largely in a single house belonging to a bourgeois family and fascination with classical music all point much more to the influence of Claude Chabrol (an underrated filmmaker too often dismissed as a Hitchcock homage artist himself). Dercourt himself is a classical musician, and that play into the film literally through its story but also in the feel; there's an understanding of rhythm and of high and low notes here that speaks to a musical structure.

The film begins with young Melanie Provoust taking a piano exam, and failing after she's put off when, in the middle of her piece, examiner Ariane Fouchecourt (Catherine Frot), breaks off to sign an autograph. Ten years later a twenty year old Melanie (Deborah Francois) is interning for a man who needs a live in au pair for his son. Melanie takes the job, and we discover that Ariane is the Mother of this family. Melanie soon becomes indispensible, becoming Ariane's page turner for an important performance, and she begins to exploit her place in the family for the purposes of revenge.

The Page Turner is a fascinating film; riveting in the way it draws out the suspense from the second we see that Ariane has become Melanie's employer, right up until its final moments. Most of that is thanks to Deborah Francois, and her brilliantly judged performance. Most revenge movies are clear in at least one thing; the main character is seeking vengeance, and at least attempting to contrive events in a way that will serve their plan to that end. This is never entirely clear in The Page Turner, because Francois plays Melanie with a slight distance, which leaves the extent to which she begins the film with a plan (one certainly comes together over the course of the film), in doubt. For example does she walk into the internship knowing she's working for Ariane's husband? The film isn't telling, and neither is Francois, and that's actually a good thing because you're hooked in by the uncertainty, and the resulting fact that you never quite know where the film will go next.

Francois does more than this though and, in only her second film, gives a performance that is at once obviously totally controlled (because Melanie is almost never off guard) and remarkably natural. The vengeance Melanie contrives is so bizarrely over the top for the provoking slight that the entire film would fall apart if you didn't believe in her every action, but Francois never slips. She's chilling throughout, but also, with her beguiling porcelain beauty and her mystery, totally fascinating, and you see why Ariane and her 12 year old son Tristan are drawn to her.

It wouldn't be right though to say that this is entirely the Deborah Francois show, Catherine Frot – apparently seen mostly in more comic roles prior to this – is similarly excellent as Ariane, giving a convincing portrait of a woman almost crippled by her nerves, and then desperately, almost sadly, grateful at the strength she draws from Melanie. In smaller parts Pascal Greggory (as Ariane's husband) and Antoine Martynciow (as Tristan) also give strong, believable, performances.

For his part Denis Dercourt exerts great control over the film, only moving the camera or cutting shots when there's a real purpose to doing so, but managing to avoid becoming static. Precision is the watchword; in acting, camera movement, shot composition and editing. This level of precision can feel overly constructed, but whenever I watch this film I'm so swept in its tension that I never feel that way about it.

Everything draws together perfectly in The Page Turner, leading to a brilliant ending that tells everything, despite the last couple of minutes of the film featuring no dialogue at all, which somehow makes Melanie's final act of revenge feel all the more powerful, and beautifully contrasts the smallness of what she's actually done with the hugeness of what it means for Ariane. It's a crying shame that none of Dercourt's other films seem to have had UK distribution.

Standout Scenes
The Audition

One tiny, almost insignificant, moment which echoes through the rest of the film.

Spike
Melanie exacts a very swift revenge when Ariane's cellist friend makes some unwelcome advances.

Clothes Shopping
Melanie bumps into a friend while out shopping and, for the only time in the film, we briefly see the real, unguarded, Melanie.

The 24FPS Top 100: Resuming

So. A while back I started this countdown of my Top 100 films (see sidebar, which will be fully up to date soon), and the project just sort of drifted away after a while.

There were several reasons for this. First of all I got REALLY busy, and frankly began spreading myself too thin. I was working on up to five websites at a time, recording and editing podcasts, contributing to other people's podcasts, along with establishing relationships with a few people in the industry, and work just began to pile on and pile on. I hit burnout. After the London Film Festival last year (in which I saw 63 films, barely slept, and wrote well over 25,000 words across two websites). I was exhausted and, worse, for the first time ever, what I was doing with the site (and others I was writing on) had begun to feel like a chore for the first time.

I've been struggling to pull out of this funk ever since, and while I've enjoyed making the 24FPS podcast; The Picture Show, I've felt that as a writer I've been in a slump this year in terms of quality as well as quantity, a slump I've only felt begin to turn with my recent Prometheus and Cosmopolis reviews, which are the first I've been proud of for some time.

I've also found myself struggling, for the first time in a long while, to get excited about movies. Last year was no classic, but 2012 has seemed to me to be an absolute desert in terms of quality cinema. I've seen almost 100 films from the year at this point, and while I can make a tentative Top 3 outside of those, and maybe one or two others, the standard has largely been sub mediocre. My favourite filmmakers have been disappointing all year (a bad Cronenberg, a bad Sono and a bad Pawlikowski within months of each other, though Cronenberg has lately redeemed himself) and even among the good things I've seen there still hasn't been that moment of discovery; the unearthing of a gem I want to champion and shout about to anyone who will listen (and many who won't). The Muppets may be bottled happiness, but still, I can't help but feel a little depressed that, at almost the exact midpoint, the best film 2012 has thrown up is a reboot of a long running series dating back to the 70's.

I've found myself drifting away from the movies a bit, and this is distressing, because I've lived and breathed cinema since I was nine, 22 years now, and if I don't love movies then I'm not sure I know who I am anymore.

In short... I NEED to get back to this list. I NEED to rediscover the films that inspire me and fire me up as a film lover and as a writer. I NEED to remind myself what's so special about this artform. I NEED to get back to the many and varied worlds these films take me to, be it the fantasy and romance of Disney's Beauty and the Beast or the nightmarish world of Martyrs.

Because of the long gap the list will be flawed, but I think that's alright. It will still reflect my taste, there are no more than a couple of things I'd shift around between numbers 100 and 52 (I'd probably move Valerie and her Week of Wonders up some), but then, precise ordering is a real challenge, and most placings outside of what I feel is a solid Top 20 could probably shift by one or two in either direction, and how do you compare The Sure Thing and Anatomy of a Murder anyway? I'm looking forward to wrapping up this unfinished business and, with a bit of luck, finding that passion again.

24FPS Top 100: No. 52

52: THE GOONIES [1985]
DIR: Richard Donner

Why is it on the list?
Just to get the obvious question out of the way. Yes. Really. I know that The Goonies is a silly kids movie, I know some of the dialogue clunks, but like a great many of my generation, though I only saw it on video, it became one of the defining films and fond memories of my childhood. But that's not why it makes the list...

The Goonies is here because it's still just as exhilarating, still just as much fun as it ever was, 26 years after it was made and a good two decades since I first saw it. For me it's both a part of my childhood and a film I still love to watch; an adventure I still enjoy going on with these kids. That's probably what caught my imagination the first time I saw it; these kids weren't much older than I was at the time, and here they were, going on the kind of adventures that we all ran around our back gardens pretending we were going on.

It also doesn't hurt that the cast, while not all the greatest actors in the world, are all clearly having fun, and have great chemistry as a group. The characters all have their own niche in the group, and with most of them you'll be able to look at your own group of friends and say 'Yeah, I was Mikey', or Mouth, or Chunk. Everyone acquits themselves well, but it's the younger members of the group (Sean Astin, Corey Feldman, Ke Huy Quan and Jeff Cohen) who get to have the most fun and nab all of the best lines as older brother Brand (a debuting Josh Brolin) and token girls Andie (Kerri Green) and Stef (Martha Plimpton, who once had 'Goonies never say die' shouted in her direction as she was playing the lead role in Hedda Gabler) mostly look on and follow behind.

The performances may not be Oscar worthy, but all of them are entertaining, with Feldman's quick-witted Mouth and Jeff Cohen as roly poly Chunk making the biggest impressions and nabbing many of the best lines. Cohen, in particular, is a delight and hilariously funny. While the others go off in search of buried treasure, Chunk is trapped in the house of villainous family The Fratelli's (Anne Ramsey, Robert Davi and Joe Pantoliano), who interrogate him in one of the film's funniest scenes. In a sweet and funny twist, Chunk also befriends the last Fratelli; deformed brother Sloth (John Matusak), who is locked in the basement, and takes him along when he goes to find and save his friends. This, of course, also leads to the film's most famous moment; Sloth's battle cry (for a fight between the Goonies and the Fratelli's aboard a pirate ship) of 'Hey You Guys!'.

The Goonies is a ride; a rollercoaster that straps you in and takes you from set piece (the wishing well) to set piece (the bone organ) to set piece (the pirate ship). It slows down occasionally, just to let you catch your breath (and to develop the romantic interest between Brolin and Green, and the animosity between Feldman and Plimpton, both of which the film mines for comedy) but for the most part this is a wild, and wildly fun, ride.

I don't envy director Richard Donner the task of marshalling this young cast, but he does it brilliantly, while also making sure the thrills and the laughs don't stop - no surprise there from the man who would make Lethal Weapon two years later. The action scenes are well staged, and the film is often stunning to look at, with Donner making the most of the outstanding production design, which becomes more and more a character in its own right as the film goes on.

When I watch The Goonies (and I watch it often), I get a warm glow. Seeing this film is like visiting old friends, going on an adventure, and revisiting an old crush (oh Kerri Green, why didn't you make more movies?), and to some degree that's what the cinema is all about, or what it should be about.

Standout Scenes
Chunk Confesses


Truffle Shuffle


And, as a bonus: a Goonies reunion (just as an aside, how stunning is Kerri Green 25 years on?)


Memorable Lines
Mama Fratelli: There it is. Okay Jake you first.
Jake Fratelli: I ain't going down there mama. Are you kidding me?
Mama Fratelli: [Cocking the handle back on the gun and pointing it at Jake] Go!
Jake Fratelli: I can't argue with that mama.

Francis Fratelli: Tell us everything! Everything!
Chunk: Everything. OK! I'll talk! In third grade, I cheated on my history exam. In fourth grade, I stole my uncle Max's toupee and I glued it on my face when I was Moses in my Hebrew School play. In fifth grade, I knocked my sister Edie down the stairs and I blamed it on the dog... When my mom sent me to the summer camp for fat kids and then they served lunch I got nuts and I pigged out and they kicked me out... But the worst thing I ever done - I mixed a pot of fake puke at home and then I went to this movie theater, hid the puke in my jacket, climbed up to the balcony and then, t-t-then, I made a noise like this: hua-hua-hua-huaaaaaaa - and then I dumped it over the side, all over the people in the audience. And then, this was horrible, all the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other. I never felt so bad in my entire life.
Jake Fratelli: I'm beginning to like this kid, Ma!
Mama Fratelli: [tired of Chunk's stalling] Hit puree!

Mikey: Goonies never say die!

[Mouth is "translating" Mrs. Walsh's instructions for Rosalita]
Irene Walsh: Pants and shirts go in the... oh, forget about it. Just throw everything into cardboard boxes. Clark, can you really translate all that?
Mouth: For sure, Mrs. Walsh.
Mouth: [in Spanish] The marijuana goes in the top drawer. The cocaine and speed go in the second drawer. And the heroin goes in the bottom drawer. Always separate the drugs.

Mikey: [sees that a dropped statue's penis has broken off] Oh my GOD! That's my mom's most favourite piece!

24FPS Top 100: No.53

53: FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH [1982]
DIR: Amy Heckerling

Why is it on the list?
In 1982, three raunchy American teen comedies came out. Porkys was ribald, and held the promise of loads of nudity, The Last American Virgin - while interesting - never quite reconciled its comedic first and dramatic second halves, but Fast Times at Ridgemont High got it just right. The backstory is quite famous now. Aged 22, Caameron Crowe, then a journalist for Rolling Stone, returned to high school for a year to research a novel. That novel (notes for which were often taken, apparently, during frequent bathroom breaks at parties) became Crowe's first screenplay, and fortunately for Crowe and debuting director Amy Heckerling it came to Hollywood just when a glut of young talent was also arriving.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High IS the 80's, aside from the brat packers, everyone is in it. Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, Forrest Whitaker, Amanda Wyss and Anthony Edwards are all familiar names, and then the cast is filled out by 'oh, it's THAT guy' actors like Scott Thomson, Robert Romanus, Brian Backer, Ray Walston and Vincent Schiavelli. It's a great cast, and it's easy to see why such talent gravitated towards the film (well, leaving aside the ever present need of young actors to no longer be living on their best friend's floor), because the screenplay gives them all sharply defined (even archetypal in some cases) characters, and fantastic dialogue, as well as an effective mix of comedy and drama to play. That's perhaps why it's such a joy to watch, because you can see how much fun everyone is having, how much they are enjoying these characters and these words.

This is especially true of the two leads. Sean Penn is now known as an incredibly intense and serious dramatic actor, but here, in his first really significant role, he's playing Jeff Spicoli; the stoned surfer dude that every stoned surfer dude since, in movies or otherwise, has to live up to. He brought his customary intensity to the set; insisting that everyone call him Spicoli, even when they called him at home, but his on screen performance is totally relaxed, and hilariously funny (perhaps more so now, viewed through the prism of 30 years of absolute seriousness). His rivalry with Ray Walston's authoritarian history teacher Mr Hand is the comedic gift that just keeps on giving from the beginning of the film ("You DICK") to the end ("What Jefferson was saying was, Hey! You know, we left this England place 'cause it was bogus; so if we don't get some cool rules ourselves - pronto - we'll just be bogus too! Get it?"). And then there is Jennifer Jason Leigh, also in her first really significant role. Ever the method actress, Leigh got a job at the exact pizza place where her character works, and worked there for a month between getting the part and filming. She doesn't so much act Stacy - the most challenging role in the film, as she has the most happen to her, and does the most growing up in the course of the story - as become her. She does this so completely that, when reviewing the film, Roger Ebert asked; 'How could they do this to Jennifer Jason Leigh? How could they put such a fresh and cheerful person into such a scuz-pit of a movie?' Now, I'm sure he's right that Leigh is 'fresh and cheerful', but one thing the last 30 years made clear she's not is delicate, or afraid of immersing herself in a scuzzy world for the good of a movie. What Ebert's done here, essentially, is mistake the actress for the character. That is how good she is here.

But I don't want to get too serious here, because Fast Times doesn't get too serious, oh sure, it deals with the trials of being a teenager, from disappointing sex, to shitty McJobs, from awkward dates, to break ups and even to abortion, but for the most part it deals with everything with a smile on its face and a really good joke not more than a minute away. Crowe crafts the dialogue beautifully, but Heckerling's direction often proves equally droll, be it the graffiti she focuses on as Stacy loses her virginity or the comically huge chairs she uses to make Stacy and her nervous date Mark Ratner (Backer) look tiny as they eat together, Heckerling packs the film with fun little visuals. Visually though, there's one thing most people remember from this film. Well, no, two things; Phoebe Cates' twins. Cates (who I wish had kept working after she had a family with Kevin Kline) plays Linda; Stacy's outwardly worldly wise friend, but plays her with the implication that, actually, she's far less experienced and worldly than she portrays herself. Her nude scene, a dream sequence in Brad's (Reinhold) masturbatory fantasy, is the scene that launched a generation on the way to puberty, and in the age of VHS you could hardly rent a copy on which the track stayed sound in that moment.

Fast Times does have an overarching story (two really; Stacy's and Spicoli's) but it is more a film of moments, and that's fine, because actually that's being a teenager; you aren't thinking about the grand overarching scheme of things at 15, you're living from one moment, one experience, to the next. In this respect Fast Times, written as it clearly is, is a good reflection of that time in your life, and while the fashions and the soundtrack (especially the soundtrack, and especially Somebody's Baby) have dated massively, the film itself still feels fresh and relevant as it approaches its 30th birthday. The laughs haven't dated either (I don't want to live in a time when the fact that someone has written Big Hairy Pussy on a bathroom mirror isn't funny) and the performances are strong all round. Among the cameos Vincent Schiavelli's science teacher may be my favourite (his opening line "I just switched to sanca, so, have a heart" is one of the film's biggger laughs), but just about everyone gets their moment to shine here.

I wish there were more American high school movies this good (the last one to get close was perhaps the still underrated 10 Things I Hate About You), but this one remains a real joy and even though my heart sinks every time we hear Somebody's Baby it still makes me laugh, and, actually gets me on an emotional level too, because it's easy to feel, so well written and acted are these characters that you know, and largely like, these people. That's why it's endured, and that's why it's on the list.


Standout Scenes




Oh, and this...

You're welcome.

Memorable Lines
Mike Damone: First of all Rat, you never let on how much you like a girl. "Oh, Debbie. Hi." Two, you always call the shots. "Kiss me. You won't regret it." Now three, act like wherever you are, that's the place to be. "Isn't this great?" Four, when ordering food, you find out what she wants, then order for the both of you. It's a classy move. "Now, the lady will have the linguini and white clam sauce, and a Coke with no ice." And five, now this is the most important, Rat. When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.

Businessman: It says one hundred percent guaranteed, you moron!
Brad Hamilton: Mister, if you don't shut up I'm gonna kick one hundred percent of your ass!

Jeff Spicoli: People on 'ludes should not drive!

Jeff Spicoli: Hey, you're ripping my card.
Mr. Hand: Yes.
Jeff Spicoli: Hey bud, what's your problem?
Mr. Hand: No problem at all. I think you know where the front office is.
Jeff Spicoli: [stunned] You dick!

Mike Damone: I can see it all now, this is gonna be just like last summer. You fell in love with that girl at the Fotomat, you bought forty dollars worth of fuckin' film, and you never even talked to her. You don't even own a camera.

24FPS Top 100: No. 54

54: GREMLINS [1984]
DIR: Joe Dante

Why is it on the list?
Honestly? Why is Gremlins on my top 100 films? I think any self respecting movie fan is likely to tell you that's like asking what's so great about pizza. It's Gremlins, it's awesome.

The thing that rather stuns me about this film is how well it mixes tones; it's a sweet, genuinely christmassy, movie with endearing characters and a lot of big laughs, but it's also dark, sharp edged and satirical, and occasionally properly scary. The thing that is really shocking about that is that Chris Columbus, you know, the bean counting rentahack who brought us such vomit inducing whimsy as Bicentennial Man (oh God, even 8 years on it haunts my nightmares) wrote Gremlins.

The fact that it works so beautifully is, then, perhaps more down to director Joe Dante, and to be fair this is very identifiably a Joe Dante film; a film shot through with its director's obsessions, particularly his pet cast members and his abiding love of cinema, and especially of schlock. Tonally it's also very much Dante's film, he mixed comedy and horror in Piranha and The Howling, but Gremlins is really where he perfected the recipe, having great fun dropping his vindictive little monsters into the middle off an idyllic It's a Wonderful Life kind of town (albeit one with a similarly dark underbelly).

Before letting the monsters loose though, Columbus and Dante draw us in to the Peltzer family as mad inventor dad Rand (Hoyt Axton, for whom the word avuncular was surely coined) brings home an exotic pet for his son Billy (Zach Galligan), Gizmo the mogwai (given impossibly cute presence by Chris Walas' stunning animatronics and equally adorable voice by Howie Mandel) is a great pet, but when Billy accidentally spills water on him he multiples, and ultimately the new mogwai become monsters, multiply further and terrorise the town in a series of riotously entertaining set pieces. Yes, that old story.

Dante mounts some great horror scenes (the Gremlin attacking Billy's old High School science teacher, with the monster shown largely in shadow, is genuinely creepy), but always laces them with a rich layer of humour. A knife wielding Gremlin attacks Billy's mother from inside their Christmas tree, and it's a scary scene because it is pretty violent, but it's also absurdly funny because the overriding image is one of a woman being attacked by a Christmas tree. Other set pieces tend more towards comedy, notably a scene where the bar Phoebe Cates (as Galligan's love interest) is working at is overtaken by Gremlins, all of whom have begun to take one their own persona, allowing Dante to riff on both terrible customers and cliché movie character types in a single manic scene. The effects are outstanding, with Walas' puppets having real physical weight and presence, and an incredible level of mobility and personality, heightening both the scares and the laughs.

However, Dante also knows how to slow down and build the characters, and he's aided by strong performances from Galligan, Cates, and Judge Reinhold; slimy as Billy's immediate boss. Despite an overriding impression that guy so dorky wouldn't have a ghost of a chance with her, Galligan and Cates actually have decent chemistry and establish a sweet relationship, and it's also worth noting that Galligan works brilliantly with the Gizmo puppet, really helping bring it life and make it feel like there is a personality and a connection there.

All in all, Gremlins is just a flat out good time. It's witty, it's scary, it's sometimes even a little moving (Cates' Santa speech - admit it, you get misty there too). It's a Christmas classic shot through with quality (I didn't even get to mention Dante's mascot Dick Miller as Mr Futterman), and it's good enough that you can enjoy it all year round. If you don't love Gremlins you probably also hate Christmas, and puppies, and babies, and all the other nice things in the world.


Standout Scenes





Memorable Lines
Chinese Boy: Look Mister, there are some rules that you've got to follow.
Rand Peltzer: Yeah, what kind of rules?
Chinese Boy: First of all, keep him out of the light, he hates bright light, especially sunlight, it'll kill him. Second, don't give him any water, not even to drink. But the most important rule, the rule you can never forget, no matter how much he cries, no matter how much he begs, never feed him after midnight.

Ruby Deagle: Mrs Harris, what are you trying to tell me?
Mrs. Joe Harris: I'm afraid none of us can pay for two weeks. Couldn't you just get Mr.Corben to just give us a little more time?
Ruby Deagle: Mrs Harris, the bank and I have the same purpose in life - to make money. Not to support a lot of... deadbeats!
Mrs. Joe Harris: Mrs Deagle! It's Christmas!
Ruby Deagle: Well, now you know what to ask Santa for, don't you?

Kate: Now I have another reason to hate Christmas.
Billy Peltzer: What are you talking about?
Kate: The worst thing that ever happened to me was on Christmas. Oh, God. It was so horrible. It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney... his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck. He died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.

24FPS Top 100: No.55

55: BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA (2007)
DIR: Gabor Csupo

Why is it on the list?
Who would have thought it; a film directed by the creator of Rugrats on my Top 100 list. I wouldn't have, that's for sure.

Bridge to Terabithia was mis-sold in the most catastrophic manner possible. It was promoted as being like The Chronicles of Narnia films for the spurious reason that the same company (not the same director but the same bloody executives) made it. It's nothing like Narnia. Okay, yes, there's a magical world - the titular Terabithia - but the film's not about that, at its heart this is a film about friendship.

The main characters are 11 year olds Jess (Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie (Annasophia Robb). Both are misfits at school; Jess because he's more interested in drawing than anything else, and Leslie because she's new, smart, and her family don't have a TV. Jess draws, and Leslie likes to write stories, so naturally the two soon strike up a friendship, and together, in the woods behind their houses, they play, inventing a kingdom called Terabithia, where they can reinterpret all the things they don't like about school and home, and have control over them.

There are many reasons I love this film, but perhaps the most personal is that this feels like a film that captures childhood - at least mine - perfectly. Childhood is a time of possibility and wonder, a time when you can defeat the school by turning him into an imaginary monster, a time when the woods behind your house and you rather slapdash treehouse can be a fortress overlooking your kingdom, and a time when being friends with girls really isn't that complicated... for a while. Without being mawkish the film explores this burgeoning relationship, as well as Jess and Leslie's home lives in a way that feels very genuine.

This can be largely attributed to the performances of Josh Hutcherson and Annasophia Robb. Hutcherson has been an impressive talent since, aged 10, he played a kid dealing with his first crush in Little Manhattan. The role of Jess isn't a showy one, he's a pretty normal kid; he likes art, is annoyed by his sisters (especially his uber-cute little sister played by Bailee Madison), hangs out with the girl next door and has a crush on his teacher (played, in a less realistic touch, by Zooey Deschanel). Jess could be pretty dull, but Hutcherson plays him as a very real and pretty complex kid. There's nothing actorly about his performance, which means that you buy it when, later in the film, he has to dig deeper and find some pretty raw emotional places. For her part, Annasophia Robb makes Leslie pretty irresistible, the girl you wish had lived next door when you were 11; smart, creative, fun and pretty. You believe them both, and more importantly you believe their friendship.

This belief in the main characters becomes vital when the film takes a truly shocking turn with half an hour to go. I saw this film when I was 27, and that twist felt like someone reaching into my chest, removing my heart and stomping on it, I can only imagine what it would have done to me when I was 11. I'd like to say more, but I won't, because I don't want to spoil the film.

Gabor Csupo proves adept at the fantasy world but, perhaps surprisingly, it's the real world scenes that he really makes stick, with a controlled, sedate, directorial style. As well as the kids he gets strong performances Deschanel and from Robert Patrick as Jess' Father.

What I really love about Bridge to Terabithia is that it's a kids movie that deals with difficult truths and challenging emotions, in a way that is accessible to children but doesn't talk down to them, and that it engages with ideas prompted by those themes without becoming preachy. It's a beautiful film, and it's a shame that a unrepresentative ad campaign led to so many people either not seeing it or being disappointed when they did.

I'm leaving out the Standout Scenes and Memorable Lines sections due to spoilers.

24FPS Top 100: No. 56

56: RE-ANIMATOR [1985]
DIR: Stuart Gordon

Why is it on the list?
Re-Animator isn't, I'll admit, many people's idea of a great movie; it's a schlocky 80's horror flick with broad performances and loads of gore. Okay, it's not Schindler's List, but it's not trying to be, and on its own unpretentious terms Re-Animator is a storming, hilarious, success.

After many years as a theatre director, Stuart Gordon broke into cinema with this, his directorial debut. Gordon's experience with long rehearsal periods and with theatre's actor focused approach may go some way to explaining why Re-Animator, though it is 'just' a low budget horror film, actually boasts a set of strong performances and a surprisingly solid, and often very witty screenplay. The cast is led by the reliably eccentric Jeffrey Combs, as Herbert West, Re-Animator (the title of HP Lovecraft's orginal story, on which Dennis Paoli, William Norris and Gordon's screenplay is -apparently very loosely - based). Combs plays West as a man consumed with his scientific breakthrough to the point of madness, but also as something of a kid in a candy store. When things (the cat, people, whatever) are dying around him West is like an excited kid with his first chemistry set, who never stops to consider whether what he's putting in his test tubes is about to explode. Wests pomposity is often very funny, but so is his mad pursuit of his goals, and the fascination with his results (especially funny is the moment he starts taking notes when the decapitated head of a rival comes back to life).

Around the charismatic Combs is a strong cast with no big names in it. David Gale seems sometimes to disdain the project, which, ironically, only makes his performance as West's teacher more perfect. However, when Gale lets himself off the leash and really becomes the film's (reanimated) villain, he seems to start enjoying himself (who wouldn't, given one particular scene)? In the other major supporting roles Bruce Abbott does his best to ground the madness as West's housemate and reluctant assistant, while Barbara Crampton, though probably hired for her beauty and willingness to be very naked, contributes a performance that does actually add up to bit more than the usual naked imperilled plot device.

However, Re-Animator isn't really a film you go to for great acting. It's one you go to for good gory fun, and on that level it delivers in, and indeed with, spades. The gore scenes, which escalate from the reanimation of a cat, through the infamous 'head' scene (details below), to the creation of a morgue full of zombies, required 25 gallons of fake blood, and the effects still hold up 26 years later. Gordon keeps things quite credible (a good idea for a film set in a medical school), resulting in not the slightly discoloured zombies of George Romero but corpses that reflect the manner of their death be it a heat attack or a shotgun to the face.

After all the madness and all the silliness, Gordon even manages to find a legitimately haunting, and character driven, note to go out on, rounding off with an excellent cliffhanger which actually deals in both horror and a surprising degree of moral complexity. It's an unusual close to an unusual gore movie, and just one more thing that makes Re-Animator stand out.


Standout Scenes [Once again these scenes were not available to embed from youtube]
Opening Titles: Largely for Richard Band's score, which riffs on Psycho to brilliant effect

Cat: Herbert West proves to his flatmate that he has indeed cracked the secret of life and death, by reanimating his dead cat. Twice.

Head: Here's something you don't see every day; a decapitated head, which has been reanimated, giving head to a naked student doctor.

Memorable Lines
Dan Cain: [Dan's cat has died and been found in Herbert's refrigerator] You can call, or write a note.
Herbert West: I was busy pushing bodies around as you well know and what would a note say, Dan? "Cat dead, details later"?

Herbert West: I must say, Dr. Hill, I'm VERY disappointed in you. You steal the secret of life and death, and here you are trysting with a bubble-headed coed. You're not even a second-rate scientist!

Dr. Carl Hill: [Dr. Hill's head has just *awakened*] Wesssssssssst...
Herbert West: Yes, Doctor, it's Herbert West. What are you thinking? How do you feel?
Dr. Carl Hill: [wheezing] Youuuuuuuuuu...
Herbert West: [eagerly taking notes] "You..."
Dr. Carl Hill: Bassssstaaaaaarrrrrd!

[Re-re-animating the dead cat in the basement]
Herbert West: Don't expect it to tango; it has a broken back.

24FPS Top 100: No. 57

57: MY SUMMER OF LOVE [2004]
DIR: Pawel Pawlikowski

Why is it on the list?
Pawel Pawlikowski, though he's worked in the UK and now, with his upcoming new film, in France, is a Polish filmmaker, and that's one of the keys to My Summer of Love. British filmmakers have often seen the north of England as a working class wasteland, where poverty and misery are rife and the world is grey, rainy and depressing. Pawlikowski doesn't paint with that brush; his Yorkshire is lush and beautiful, sunshine pours down, haloing main characters Mona (Natalie Press) and Tamsin (Emily Blunt). This is a film that captures both a place and a time in a vivid way, but that's far from being all that it does.

Based on a novel by Helen Cross (which I've read, and which bears little resemblance to the film, most strikingly in that it's bloody awful), the film is about working class Mona, who lives with her born again older brother (Paddy Considine) in a disused Yorkshire pub. One day, at the beginning of the summer holidays, Mona meets posh Tamsin, and the two begin spending a lot of time together, before falling into an intense romantic relationship.

Emily Blunt has, in the seven years since My Summer of Love, gone on to become a bona fide Hollywood star, and it's not hard to see why; serenely beautiful, she also demonstrates a wide ranging talent as Tamsin. It's a complex character, because her motivations and whether she's telling the truth at any given moment are often deliberately hidden, even from her girlfriend. Tamsin is not a very likeable character; pretentious, often inconsiderate and manipulative, but you can also see what she represents for Mona; an escape to a different world, and why that proves seductive. Blunt plays all the notes beautifully, and she's especially effective in a cruel moment in which she tries to seduce Mona's brother Phil.

Paddy Considine is often billed as the British DeNiro (Taxi Driver DeNiro, not Meet the Fockers DeNiro) and this performance might be exhibit A in making that case. He's incredibly intense as Phil, and even at his most pious and controlled, Considine lets us sense the violence in the character, now directed into spiritual fervour. He's extraordinary when he's held in, and genuinely trying to give his sister comfort, and equally so when, inevitably, Phil explodes. Throughout it's the direct force and focus of his performance which makes Phil so compelling, and such an intriguing character.

However, the best performance in My Summer of Love comes from its least known, and subsequently least rewarded, player; Natalie Press. Mona is probably the most straightforward character; she wears her emotions about Tamsin, and about her Brother (who she feels she has entirely lost to his conversion) firmly on her sleeve and is, for the most part, drolly downbeat about her expectations of life (see both Standout Scenes and Memorable Lines). A Londoner, Press nails the Yorkshire accent pitch perfectly, and makes Mona, despite her naivete and brash manner, extremely winning, so much so that you find yourself worrying for her as you begin to see more and more of what Tamsin is like. Though she has a quite straightforward character, Press has more registers to play than her co-stars, and she hits the humour, the romance, and the obsession in Mona all with great clarity and conviction. It's a subtler performance than the others, but one that sneaks up on you.

As I mentioned earlier, Pawel Pawlikowski gives this film a very particular feel with his visuals, when Mona and Tamsin are together it is often soft lit, even dreamlike, particularly when they are in Tamsin's house, while at home and around town with Mona the film has a slightly more stark visual approach. Pawlikowski takes a tasteful approach to the one extended love scene, but still makes it feel like an intense experience (before undersutting it in the next scene with the film's funniest moment), and he also handles the shift in tone for the film's rather disturbing coda (which makes it feel ever more closely related to Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures) with great assurance and aplomb. Adding to the dreamy, summery, feel is the score by Goldfrapp, taken largely from their first album; Felt Mountain, it suits both the subject and visuals down to the ground, but never dominates the film.

My Summer of Love is a beautifully constructed film, full of feeling and fine acting, I wish it were rather better known.


Standout Scenes
Sadly none of these scenes were available to embed from youtube.

Mona's Ambitions: A very funny and revealing scene in which Mona tells Tamsin how she thinks her life will turn out (see below for the line)

Going Dancing: Mona and Tamsin take magic mushrooms and go dancing; at a pensioners ballroom dancing night, Pawlikowski and Goldfrapp give it dreamlike atmosphere.

Portrait: Separated from Tamsin, Mona draws her picture on her bedroom wall, and kisses that instead.

Memorable Lines
Tamsin: So what are you going to do with your life?
Mona: I'm gonna be a lawyer. [pause] I'm gonna get a job in an abattoir, work really hard, get a boyfriend who's like... a bastard, and churn out all these kids, right, with mental problems. And then I'm gonna wait for the menopause... or cancer.

Phil: What is wrong with you?
Mona: I just miss me brother.
Phil: I'm here.
Mona: That ain't you. It ain't.
Phil: Oh no, this is me, this is the real me.
Mona: I want the old Phil
Phil: Well that old Phil, he didn't make me very happy.
Mona: He made me happy. I love my brother, he used to be real. I haven't got any family, me home's changed, no one fancies me... [breaks into tears]
Phil: [hugging Mona] Oh Jesus watch over this child, watch over her...
Mona: Oh no, fuck off! Fuck off!

Tamsin: If you leave me, I'll kill you.
Mona: If you leave me, I'll kill you... and then I'll kill myself.

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24FPS Top 100: No. 58

58: ED WOOD (1994)
DIR: Tim Burton

Why is it on the list?
Ed Wood is a wonderful piece of filmmaking about a terrible filmmaker, and that's largely because both Tim Burton and Johnny Depp (who, of course, stars as Ed) seem to hold Edward D Wood, Jr in great affection, meaning that the film comes across as sympathetic to Wood both as a man and as an artist (this is perhaps also why the film avoids Wood's sad decline and relatively early passing).

There are several interesting films to be made about Ed Wood, but Burton wisely focuses on the period surrounding the making of his key films Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space (which revived Wood's name shortly after his death when it was named the worst film ever made), his friendship with Bela Lugosi (an Oscar winning Martin Landau) and his relationships with first actress Dolores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker) and then his wife Kathy (Patricia Arquette), as well as his transvestism. It's a lot to cover, but Burton does it in breezily entertaining fashion, helped along by Depp's incredibly appealing performance as Wood. There is only one short reel of footage of Ed Wood directing, on the set of early short The Streets of Laredo, he comes across as a kid in a candy store, excited by the whole process, and that's exactly how Depp plays him; as a man whose boundless enthusiasm for movies both gives him the mean to work in the industry, and leads to the often shoddy quality of his work (though I maintain that Plan 9, some silly technical errors notwithstanding, has some extremely compelling images in it). However, Depp also digs deep into the character, exploring the reasons that Wood surrounds himself with oddballs, his sexuality (and his remarkably straightforward attitude towards it, and most importantly his friendship with Lugosi. The scenes Depp and Landau share create a real bond between Wood and Lugosi, and though each is exploiting the other there is warmth there too (even if only briefly in the case of Landau's irascible addict Lugosi.

Landau's Oscar was perhaps a surprise (most people, including the man himself, thinking that Samuel L Jackson would win for Pulp Fiction, but he doesn't let the exceptional, subtle, prosthetic make up do the work for him. Landau entirely disappears, and Bela Lugosi comes back to life in front of us. His performance is by turns droll, caustic, and heartbreaking, and he fully deserved his award.

Shooting in black and white, Burton lovingly recreates Hollywood's late 1950's poverty row. The period detail is spot on, and Burton exhibits an understanding of composition that his subject never really showed evidence of having on a consistent basis. The lighting is beautiful here, particularly in a noirish scene in which a dragged up Ed meets his hero, Orson Welles, in a bar, and Burton recreates many of Ed's most memorable images, sometimes capturing them better than the original auteur ever could (the scene from Glen or Glenda in which Dolores Fuller hands Ed her angora sweater here achieves the emotion that Ed was likely aiming for).

As well as being beautiful, and an engaging character study, Ed Wood is a consistently funny film - you can't make a film about people this odd and have it not be funny. Ed's enthusiasm, can do attitude and relentless focus on the positive provides many laughs, as do cameos from the likes of Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie (Burton's then girlfriend, playing Vampira) and Bill Murray (hilariously deadpan as transsexual Plan 9 player Bunny Breckinridge).

Most of all though, for me, Ed Wood is a love letter to cinema, and to people who love cinema, as Ed Wood undoubtedly did. It does a great service in bringing at least some of Ed's remarkable story to light, but it more than stands alone, as one of the great American studio films of the 90's, and surely Tim Burton's finest hour. Double bill it with Plan 9.

Standout Scenes

Wood shoots his magnum opus in this hilarious scene.


Wood deals with an irascible (and drunk) Bela Lugosi, and an octopus with no motor.

Memorable Lines
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: I like to dress in women's clothing.
Georgie Weiss: You're a fruit?
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: No, not at all. I love women. Wearing their clothes makes me feel closer to them.
Georgie Weiss: You're not a fruit?
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: No, I'm all man. I even fought in W.W.2. Of course, I was wearing women's undergarments under my uniform.

Dolores Fuller: Ed, what's *my* motivation?
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: You're the file clerk. You're running into the next room and you run into Janet.
Dolores Fuller: But are we good friends or is she just a casual acquaintance?
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Dolores, I have five days to complete this picture. Don't get goofy on me.

Edward D. Wood, Jr.: And cut! Print. We're moving on. That was perfect.
Ed Reynolds: Perfect? Mr. Wood, do you know anything about the art of film production?
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Well, I like to think so.
Ed Reynolds: That cardboard headstone tipped over. This graveyard is obviously phony.
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Nobody will ever notice that. Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It's about the big picture.
Ed Reynolds: The big picture?
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Yes.
Ed Reynolds: Then how 'bout when the policemen arrived in daylight, but now it's suddenly night?
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: What do you know? Haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief?

Edward D. Wood, Jr.: Why if I had half a chance, I could make an entire movie using this stock footage. The story opens on these mysterious explosions. Nobody knows what's causing them, but it's upsetting all the buffalo. So, the military are called in to solve the mystery.
Editor on Studio Lot: You forgot the octopus.
Edward D. Wood, Jr.: No, no, I'm saving that for my big underwater climax.

24FPS Top 100: No. 59

59: THE DESCENT (2005)
DIR: Neil Marshall

Why is it on the List?
For horror fans, Neil Marshall's second movie (after soldiers vs werewolves debut Dog Soldiers) offers fantastic value for money. It is essentially two knuckle whitening horror movies for the price of one, served up in just 95 minutes of your time.

After twenty minutes of setup, acquainting us with the all female cast of characters, with whom we are about to spend the next hour in the dark of an unexplored system of caves, the first of these horror movies begins in earnest; a tense journey through the caves, during which Marshall continually raises the stakes with claustrophobic scare sequences, injuries and the revelation that the girls are not in the cave system they thought they were in.

After about 40 minutes of that, the film explodes into high gear as it becomes a terrifying and brutal monster movie, featuring truly scary creature design, splashy violence and some truly iconic final girl imagery. Okay, so it's not the most original horror film you'll ever see, but Marshall arranges the elements so well that the jump scares work every time (even on subsequent viewings). In fact, one scare in this film, for me, is just about as good a jump scare as there has ever been in a movie. It happens the first time you really see a 'crawler', and it makes me have to catch my breath even now (you can see it below in Standout Scenes).

However, The Descent isn't just a scare machine. The characters are broadly written, but well played by Marshall's all female cast, with Shauna MacDonald standing out as the initially nervous and frightened woman who finds unexpected reserves of strength (and gets a final girl shot so cool it deserves to rank with Sissy Spacek covered in pigs blood, in a film we'll discuss later in this list), but while the performances are good, it is the photography that really impresses here.

The Descent was shot on a set, but Marshall and DP Sam McCurdy make the environment feel very real (and very threatening) through their use of camera and lighting. There is little cheating the light here, most of the cave sequences are lit with torches, infra red cameras, lighters, glowsticks or some other available source of light. Obviously as well as adding to the verisimilitude, this allows Marshall to have his monsters use the shadows effectively, and means that the dark itself, even when there's nothing in it, becomes scary.

It's not the smartest film on this list, but The Descent is a fun, frightening ride, with something for every horror fan from creepy 'what's that in the background' moments to unbelievable tension (the collapsing tunnel) to good old fashioned ultraviolence. What's not to like?


Standout Scenes
"What the Fuck was that?"
Our first proper look at a 'crawler', and it's fucking scary.

The Tunnel
I'm claustrophobic, so this sequence in which a tunnel collapses, threatening to trap one of the girls inside, is one of my worst nightmares.


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24FPS Top 100: No. 60

60: TOY STORY 3 [2010]
DIR: Lee Unkrich

WHY IS IT ON THE LIST?
If you need to ask then I really don't have anything to say to you. For my money the Toy Story series is the great film series of our time, perhaps of all time, three films that each managed to be incredibly successful as popular entertainment, but also to have intelligence, resonance and real emotional content, all wrapped up in what ostensibly is 'just' a kids film.

This third in the series is perhaps the most adult; at its core it is about aging. Both the aging of the toys, who are essentially shipped off, albeit by accident, to a retirement home (in the form of a daycare centre) early in the film, and the aging of their, owner Andy, who is going to college and no longer needs Woody and Buzz in the way he once did. It's a sad an elegiac tale. However the film is also joyful, as much about the act of passing things on to the next generation as it is anything else (apt, as this film will have brought a whole new set of kids to the world of these characters), and as concerned with being a rollicking entertainment as it is in telling a genuinely adult story.

The animation is gorgeous and flowing, a real step up from the first two films, which now look a little dated, however the updating of the design is subtle enough that these remain identifiably the same characters as we saw in 1995 and 1999, just refined versions of them.

The action sequences are wonderful, and deftly combine thrills, laughs and emotion, especially as the film builds first to its great escape inspired daycare breakout and then to its phenomenal centrepiece, as the toys desperately try to escape a furnace in a scene that is both visually stunning and tremendously moving.

The characterisation is dead on, both in terms of animation and voice acting, be it the returning Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack, slipping effortlessly back inside the skins of Woody, Buzz and Jessie or newcomers like Ned Beatty as tragic, strawberry scented, villain Lotso, Michael Keaton as Ken (who has some brilliant exchanges with Jodi Benson's Barbie) and cameo players like Timothy Dalton, hilarious as method acting hedgehog Mr Pricklepants, and Pixar animator Bud Luckey as sad clown Chuckles. I could go on all day, such is the depth of quality.

You can feel how important this film was to the people involved as you watch it, it seemed impossible that it could live up to the legacy of the first two after so long, but Toy Story 3 is a perfect closer for the series, retaining everything that is great about the first two films and bringing the story full circle in a scene that has moved me to tears every time I've seen it.

Collectively, Pixar's films are proof that great children's films don't have to talk down to kids, or throw in gags hey won't get as a sop to parents (or indeed bore parents), Toy Story 3 is perhaps the finest expression of that, an intelligent and complex film that also manages to be about as entertaining as you could wish for.

STANDOUT SCENES






MEMORABLE LINES
There really are too many, but these, from the last scene, mean the most to me.

Andy: [opens box, and takes out Jessie] This is Jessie, the roughest, toughest cowgirl in the whole west. She loves critters, but none more than her best pal, Bullseye!
[pulls out Bullseye, and makes a whinnying sound]
Andy: Yee-haw!
[holds the two tows out to Bonnie]
Andy: Here.
Bonnie: [shyly walks over, and takes Jessie and Bullseyes, a smile on her face]
Andy: [pulls out Rex] This is Rex! The meanest, most terrifying dinosaur who ever lived! RAWR! RAWR!
Bonnie: [recoils a little, but the giggles, and takes Rex too]
Andy: [pulls out Mr and Mrs Potato Head] The Potato Heads: Mr and Mrs. You gotta keep them together because they're madly in love.
[Andy sets them down in front of Bonnie, before pulling out Slinky Dog]
Andy: Now Slinky here, is as loyal as any dog you could want.
[Andy then pulls out Hamm]
Andy: And Hamm, he'll keep your money safe, but he's also one of the most dastardly villains of all time: Evil Dr Porkchop!
[Andy then places the two with their friends, before pulling out the three aliens]
Andy: These little dudes are from a strange alien world: Pizza Planet!
[Andy then sets them down before reaching into his box again]
Andy: And this, is Buzz Lightyear, the coolest toy ever! Look! He can fly, oh, and shoot lasers!
[Andy pops open Buzz's wings, and fires his laser]
Andy: He's sworn to protect the galaxy from the Evil Emperor Zurg!
Bonnie: [Bonnie takes Buzz from Andy, and presses one of the buttons on his spacesuit]
Buzz Lightyear: To Infinity, and Beyond!
Andy: Now, you gotta promise to take good care of these guys. They, mean, alot to me.

Andy: Now Woody, he's been my pal for as long as I can remember. He's brave, like a cowboy should be. And kind, and smart. But the thing that makes Woody special, is he'll never give up on you... ever. He'll be there for you, no matter what.

Andy: [taking a last look at his toys before he heads off to college] Thanks, guys.

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24FPS Top 100: No. 61

61: WATER LILIES
DIR: Celine Sciamma

WHY IS IT ON THE LIST?
There is something about the way that Europe does films about teenagers, perhaps it's the lack of that quintessentially American optimism, but Europe's teen movies seem to be gritter, more downbeat, and for my money more reflective of what being a teenager tends to be like. Celine Sciamma's debut is a good example, it's a low key story about 14 year old Marie (Pauline Acquart) and her crush on Floriane (Adele Haenel), the star of the local synchronised swimming team. It's a film about unrequited feelings, and about the confusion and pain they provoke.

Sciamma's screenplay is smartly written; sensitive and realistic, and unafraid to deal with the shallowness and petty cruelties of which teenagers are capable, especially in the way Marie shuts out her awkward friend Anne (Louise Blachere) - whose own crush on Floriane's sometime boyfriend complicates the relationships further. The centre of the film is the relationship between Floriane and Marie, and the clear imbalance in it. It's obvious that Floriane knows how Marie feels about her, perhaps to a greater degree than Marie does, and she uses it to her perceived advantage. In one very difficult scene Floriane asks a very intimate favor of Marie, so that she can have sex with her boyfriend without him knowing that it is her first time. On another occasion, in one of the film's best scenes, the girls go to a club and Floriane drags Marie on to the dancefloor, dancing close, drawing her in, almost kissing her, before pulling away in a palpably painful moment.

The fact that Marie's crush is on another girl is really neither here nor there, the film isn't about titillating you with lesbians, it's about the dynamics of this relationship and Marie's first painful experience of being, or thinking that she's, in love and those things are not about gender. If this were an American film I suspect it would have ended with Floriane seeing the error of her ways, going to find Marie, declaring her love and kissing her in the middle of some dancefloor. Water Lilies doesn't do that, it's more consistent and more true than that, and the ending Sciamma actually finds is perfect, if more ambiguous.

Celine Sciamma directs sensitively, and draws performances of astonishing naturalism from her young cast. Acquart is especially good, and it's a terrible shame that she's done little since (a couple of shorts, a music video and just one feature). The visuals have a similar tone to Andrea Arnold's, in that they vacillate between a kitchen sink approach and a more designed and dreamlike feel (see the clips below to get a better sense of that). This is a distinctive and promising debut, and it will be interesting to see whether Sciamma can keep the quality up with her next film, which is likely to premiere at Cannes.

STANDOUT SCENES



[No subs, sorry]


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24FPS Top 100: No. 62

62: THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS [1983]
DIR: Carl Reiner

WHY IS IT ON THE LIST?
It's a challenge writing these summaries about comedy films, because the temptation is to simply write 'because it's fucking hilarious' and leave it at that. But I'll resist the temptation, both because that's not tremendously informative, and because there is more than that to The Man with Two Brains.

Of Steve Martin's early work, The Jerk seems to be the most celebrated, while better and more consistent films like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and this comic masterpiece seem to go comparatively unnoticed. With his stage act and these early films, Martin became one of the great proponents of 'silly'. The comedy isn't sophisticated, indeed it's decidedly lowbrow, though largely without, except where appropriate to the characters, the streak of cruelty that makes today's lowbrow comedy so depressing.

The film is about a widowed brain surgeon (Martin), who unwittingly marries a black widow (Kathleen Turner) after running her over, but saving her life with his surgical skills. On honeymoon he meets a mad scientist (David Warner) who can keep disembodied brains alive in jars, discovering that he can communicate telepathically with one of the brains (voice of Sissy Spacek), he falls in love.

It is wonderfully, deliriously, endlessly silly. Martin is at his absolute manic best as the preposterously named Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr. He's great at the physical comedy; especially funny in the scenes in which a very frustrated Hfuhruhurr, having not yet had sex with his new wife, is so on edge that he all but destroys his bosses office, which show off a very different sort of clowning to the loose limbed style that is more typical. Martin is also a wonderfully adept verbal comic, the precision of his delivery selling every joke beautifully (just listen to the triumph in his voice when - in one of the film's most beautiful absurdities - he tells a four year old that she has made a mistaken diagnosis, and the investment in his reading of his wife's favourite poem; Pointy Birds).

This is not, though, the Steve Martin show. Kathleen Turner puts a very funny spin on her malevolent femme fatale of Body Heat, while David Warner makes for the perfect mad scientist and Paul Benedict puts in a droll turn as Warner's Butler. It's all brilliantly drawn together by director Carl Reiner, who, along with Martin as co-screenwriter, provides this film a much stronger through line than their other collaborations, while never neglecting to have something funny going on.

For me though the thing that really makes The Man With Two Brains the success it is is the fact that there is more to it than silliness. As odd as it sounds, the love story between Martin as Hfuhruhurr and Sissy Spacek (who is uncredited, but with that unmistakable voice hardly needs to be named) as a disembodied brain named Anne Uumellmahaye, is really sweet and touching as well as providing stand out comic moments like the boat trip during which Hfuhruhurr sticks some wax lips on Anne's jar so he can kiss her. Spacek manages to create a genuinely lovable character as Anne, and that lifts the film beyond mere silliness.

That said, silliness is a noble art, and few films have contributed as much or as definitively to it as this one, personally I find it funnier and more enjoyable every time I see it, and the set pieces never fail to make me roar with laughter. A truly underrated classic.

STANDOUT SCENES







MEMORABLE LINES
Dolores: The Complete Poems of John Lillison, England's greatest one-armed poet.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: He wrote 'In Dillman's Grove' and 'Pointy Birds.' O pointy birds, o pointy pointy, anoint my head, anointy-nointy.

Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: You. You're the elevator killer. Merv Griffin.
Merv Griffin: Yeah.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: Why?
Merv Griffin: I don't know. I've always just loved to kill. I really enjoyed it. But then I got famous, and - it's just too hard for me. And so many witnesses. I mean, *everybody* recognized me. I couldn't even lurk anymore. I'd hear, "Who's that lurking over there? Isn't that Merv Griffin?" So I came to Europe to kill. And it's really worked out very well for me.

Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: The only time we doctors should accept death is when it's caused by our own incompetence.
Dr. Necessiter: Nonsense. If the murder of twelve innocent people can help save one human life, it will have been worth it.

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24FPS Top 100: No 63

Because this film is out of copyright you can watch it free and legally in full on Youtube by clicking the link below.

63: HIS GIRL FRIDAY [1940]
DIR: Howard Hawks

WHY IS IT ON THE LIST?
Radio 5 Live critic Mark Kermode's rule for current comedies is that he recommends those with six laughs or more. It's a sad, sad state of affairs when one laugh roughly every 17.5 minutes can be considered as a recommendable ratio. To say that, given that qualification, His Girl Friday is a recommendable comedy would be to drastically understate things. This film doesn't have a laugh every 17.5 minutes, hell I'd be surprised if the ratio weren't better than 1 laugh every 17.5 seconds, so fast and furious is the comedy.

His Girl Friday came about when Director Howard Hawks, trying to demonstrate why he believed that the play The Front Page, on which the film is based, had the best dialogue he had ever heard. He took one of the male leads to read, and asked a female guest to take the other, soon realising that changing the gender of one of the characters had great effect on dialogue and story. So, the male editor and reporter of the play become a crack female reporter and her editor and ex-husband, lending an entirely different chemistry, and new comic possibilities, to the story.

Hawks' frequent collaborator Cary Grant rejoined him for this film, and he's at his urbane best here, making Walter Burns, who is a manipulative and pretty awful character if you stop and think about for more than about two seconds, charming and hilarious. Opposite him, in place of the intended Jean Arthur (with whom Hawks apparently didn't hit it off on Only Angels Have Wings the year before) Hawks cast Rosalind Russell, not the most beautiful leading lady of her time, but a talented one, and able to hold the screen, even with Grant at his most charismatic and funny.

Russell is the anchor of the film, and her rich voice and crisp delivery bite into the many hilarious lines in Charles Lederer's screenplay. She talks (as does everyone) at 100 miles per hour, but we never miss a word of it, and her comic timing is impeccable. There's a particular skill too in making the story play in a screwball comedy, and Russell's dramatic background serves her well there, she's able to turn on a dime and play the films various relationships (with Grant and with her new fiancé, played by Ralph Bellamy) believably without letting the laughs flag.

Cary Grant may seldom have played anyone but Cary Grant (and he's really not stretching much here) but he did it with such assurance, such skill and such charm that you can't help but be drawn in. There's a surprising economy to Grant's performance here; he doesn't actually move much, giving the impression of Walter Burns as an utterly assured man who knows that everything is certain to work out his way. He's also capable of some wonderfully ridiculous moments. Grant plays the film's last twenty minutes at more or less constant fever pitch, becoming funnier with every passing second. Also to grant's credit he improvised perhaps the film's funniest line, when Walter is asked to describe Hildy's fiancé and says "He looks like that fellow in the movies... Ralph Bellamy"

This isn't to say that the quality stops with Grand and Russell, there is an endless parade of funny supporting performances, fro me the most notable is from Billy Gilbert, who has two hilarious scenes as a messenger named Mr Pettibone. Hawks, for his part keeps a light but firm grasp on the madness, never drawing attention to the camera or editing, but never letting the energy drop and the film begin to feel like a filmed play.

Honestly though, His Girl Friday is on the list because it's funny.

MEMORABLE LINES
Walter Burns: There's been a lamp burning in the window for ya, honey... here.
Hildy Johnson: Oh, I jumped out that window a long time ago.

Bruce Baldwin: [Concerning Walter] I like him; he's got a lot of charm.
Hildy Johnson: Well he comes by it naturally his grandfather was a snake.

Walter Burns: [on the phone] Well Butch, where are you?... Well, what are you doing there? Haven't you even started?... Listen, it's a matter of life and death!... Well, you can't stop for a dame now! I don't care if you've been after her for six years. Butch - our whole lives are at stake! Are you going to let a woman come between us after all we've been through?... Butch, I'd put my arm in fire for you, up to here. Now you can't double-cross me... Put her on, I'll talk to her.
[talking to the woman]
Walter Burns: Oh, good evening madam. Now listen, you ten-cent glamour girl. You can't keep Butch away from his duty!... What's that?... You say that again, I'll come over there and kick you in the teeth!... Say, what kind of language is that? Now look here you. -
[makes a noise like a horse, hangs up]
Walter Burns: She hung up! What did I say?

Walter Burns: Look, Hildy, I only acted like any husband that didn't want to see his home broken up.
Hildy Johnson: What home?
Walter Burns: "What home"? Don't you remember the home I promised you?

Hildy Johnson: A big fat lummox like you hiring an airplane to write: "Hildy, don't be hasty. Remember my dimple. Walter." Delayed our divorce 20 minutes while the judge went out and watched it.

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24FPS Top 100: No. 64

Click the title below for the trailer.

64: WITCHFINDER GENERAL [1968]
DIR: Michael Reeves


WHY IS IT ON THE LIST?
Michael Reeves was the wunderkind of low budget British cinema in the 60's. This, his third and final film, was also considered the one that really marked him out as a talent to watch for the future. He was 24 when Witchfinder General (known in the US by the odd title The Conqueror Worm) was made, and 25 when he died of a drug overdose, during pre-production for his next film.

If Witchfinder General became Reeves' epitaph he could hardly have asked for a better one; a focused, frightening and disturbing horror film, groundbreaking for its time in its depiction of violence and containing the finest performance of genre legend Vincent Price.

The film is based on the real life figure of Matthew Hopkins, self described 'Witchfinder General' of England during the civil war. His activities were actually quite short lived (1645-47) and ended not as the film does but in retirement from the post. It was clearly a reign of terror, if estimates are to be believed Hopkins and his assistant John Stearne may have been responsible for 40% of the executions for witchcraft ever carried out in England. He was also a great deal younger than Vincent Price plays him, perhaps as young as 25 at his death. The film may not be wedded to the facts, but that almost certainly helps it find its propulsive plot, which has Hopkins and Stearne pursued by a young captain in Cromwell's army (played by Ian Ogilvy, who was in all of Reeves' films) who is seeking revenge for the rape of his fiancé and the hanging as a witch of her uncle, a priest.

Vincent Price and Michael Reeves apparently hated each other. Reeves didn't want Price (he was after Donald Pleasance), but the star was forced on him by production company Tigon, and Price knew this. Price was also apparently incensed by Reeves' constant demands that he 'do less' and 'stop acting'. It may have made Witchfinder General hell to make but even Price, once he saw the film, agreed that this was his finest performance. Instead of being camp, as he often was, Price oozes cruelty and menace in a tightly wound, thin lipped, performance. His Hopkins is vile, clearly aware of his own evil, and yet insistent that his is 'the lord's work'. This is a chillingly corrupt psychopath, allowed by timing and superstition to run amock, killing and often raping as he pleases and being paid for his trouble.

Reeves doesn't indulge in the violence as much the directors of his generation who would make their first cinematic bows in the next few years; Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, David Cronenberg among them, but what Witchfinder General lacks in explicitness it makes up many fold in impact. Much of the torture and killing in the film is played on the reaction of spectators, the screams of the victims telling the story that British censorship at the time stopped the images from relating. In many way this is more disturbing; gore effects of this time often look silly now, but Reeves allows our imaginations to go to work, and that's always going to produce a more disturbing image in the circumstances.

This is not to say that the violence of the film lacks either credibility or impact, indeed the execution scenes are done with chilling realism and indeed chilling nonchalance. From the opening hanging to the climactic burning of a young woman in a Suffolk town square, the images of violence are confrontational and upsetting.

If the other performances don't quite come up to Price's level that's okay (though Ogilvy makes for a solid hero), few apart from Hilary Dwyer (beautiful, but no great shakes in the acting department) have much to do, and there are no real embarrassments among the cast. Price commands the screen, and his performance is mesmerising, as is the film as a whole. Witchfinder General is a disturbing experience as a film, but it's even more so when you take a step back and consider that, at least in broad strokes, it's true.

STANDOUT SCENES
Ducking: We've all heard about this practice to 'discover' whether an accused person was a witch, but to see it so graphically depicted is genuinely disturbing.

Burn the witch: Reeves spares no detail in this scene of Hopkins' most horrifying method of execution.

MEMORABLE LINES
[Hopkins and his men throw three securely-bound people into the moat as a witchcraft test]
Matthew Hopkins: They swim... the mark of Satan is upon them. They must hang.

[a tied-up woman Hopkins has thrown into the moat to test for witchcraft drowns]
Matthew Hopkins: She was innocent

Matthew Hopkins: Men sometimes have strange motives for the things they do.


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24FPS Top 100: No. 65

65: A FISH CALLED WANDA [1988]
DIR: Charles Crichton


WHY IS IT ON THE LIST?
A Fish Called Wanda is a silly film, and I mean that in the best possible way, it is gloriously silly, and yet it is beautifully constructed, almost musical in the way it conducts it various characters and storylines and peppers the jokes through the roughly 100 minute running time.

But it is perhaps expected that A Fish Called Wanda should be both silly and meticulous, as those are the two qualities for which its writer (and uncredited co-director) John Cleese is famous. He worked on the screenplay for Wanda for six years; honing every joke, working and reworking every storyline, polishing every line, every moment, to a mirror shine (what went wrong with spiritual follow up Fierce Creatures remains something of a mystery). It's not, though, this polish that makes Wanda such fun to watch as much as it is the wonderfully natural and loose way that everything comes together.

Cleese himself takes the lead as an uptight barrister named Archie Leach (a reference to Cary Grant's real name). Leach is defending George Thomason (Tom Georgeson) the leader of a gang of jewel thieves, but the other gang members want the loot and so Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) seduces Leach so that she and her lover Otto (Kevin Kline) can learn where the diamonds are without tipping off George. What's really great about this film is that the story just works; the jokes are the spice, but the basic story and characters would be interesting even without them.

That said, this is a comedy, and as well as it functions as a fun caper movie, it's the jokes you'll remember. Reviewing comedy comes down to the simple question; is it funny? Well, A Fish Called Wanda must rank among the funniest films ever made. The choice of then 77 year old Charles Crichton to direct is indicative of how the film plays; Crichton made a lot of the famed Ealing comedies, including The Lavender Hill Mob, which is a clear influence here. While there are some coarse moments in the film and both language and humour are allowed to be more explicit than in the heyday of Ealing the film still feels rather old fashioned, delighting in intricate dialogue and in scenes of high farce for its laughs, rather than the shouting and bodily function based 'comedy' we tend to see now.

Cleese is great, once again playing the role of a stuck up and frequently exasperated authority figure , but also generating enough warmth to make his romantic scenes with Curtis (19 years his junior) if not entirely convincing then at least not creepy. Most of the time though, Cleese plays straight, generously leaving his co-stars to pick up the big laughs. The biggest go to Kevin Kline, whose performance won him an Oscar, incredibly rare for a comic performance. Kline, previously known as a dramatic actor is pitch perfect as the incredibly stupid Otto, a man who despises pomposity in the English, yet is blind to his own and repeatedly admonishes people "Don't call me stupid". Kline's timing is perfect; look at the wonderful scene when, after shopping George to the Police, Otto and Wanda go to retrieve the jewels and discover that George has hidden them, Kline's "Okay... Okay... DISAPPOINTED" is so beautifully timed that it makes the whole scene.

A less surprising, but equally brilliant, comic turn comes from Cleese's old Monty Python cohort Michael Palin, who is priceless as Ken, a stammering animal rights activist tasked with killing the eyewitness who could put George in jail (something he fails to do in sequences of escalating absurdity and hilarity). Palin nails the reality of Ken's stammer, playing it perfectly (it is based on his father's voice) but also plays it to the hilt for laughs with the timing of a masterful musician.

Curtis has less overt comedy to play (though the one scene where she does get to cut loose is one of the film's best) but she makes Wanda interesting and real. She's a good enough actress to make us believe the process as Wanda warms up to Archie and she's certainly beautiful and sexy enough that we believe how hard and fast Archie falls for her. Also worth mentioning is a wonderfully dry performance from Maria Aitken as Archie's wife.

The bottom line is that, perhaps 20 years and probably a similar amount of viewings since I first saw it, A Fish Called Wanda had me roaring with laughter again last week as I watched it to prepare this post. That's a good enough argument for its inclusion here all by itself.

STANDOUT SCENES
Wanda and Archie's date night
A brilliant piece of farce, expertly and economically shot by Crichton and played with pitch perfect timing by the whole cast.

The Kah... The Kah...
Cleese and Palin's first scene together in the whole film, as Ken desperately tries to tell Archie something vital.

MEMORABLE LINES
Wanda: [after Otto breaks in on Wanda and Archie in Archie's flat and hangs him out the window] I was dealing with something delicate, Otto. I'm setting up a guy who's incredibly important to us, who's going to tell me where the loot is and if they're going to come and arrest you. And you come loping in like Rambo without a jockstrap and you dangle him out a fifth-floor window. Now, was that smart? Was it shrewd? Was it good tactics? Or was it stupid?
Otto: Don't call me stupid.
Wanda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
Otto: Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.

Otto: You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English, giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-face, dickhead, asshole.
Archie: How very interesting. You're a true vulgarian, aren't you?
Otto: You're the vulgarian, you fuck.

[Otto dangles Archie out a window]
Archie: All right, all right, I apologise.
Otto: You're really sorry.
Archie: I'm really really sorry, I apologise unreservedly.
Otto: You take it back.
Archie: I do, I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

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