Sunday 2 January 2011

Tiers Two: Judgment Day

A couple of top tier quickies - films whose inclusion are hardly groundbreaking.

Withnail and I

This isn't even a remotely unusual choice, and so there is little I can say that isn't already known. In short, a story deeply tragic, yet uproarously hilarious, which maintains a constant texture to its dialogue, with not a line off target. Its true strength, though, is in the depth of its observation and reflection, which taps a much deeper vein of pathos than is usual of farce.


Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Another craftsman's film, like Chinatown, and like others I've yet to list; films in which every aspect has been neatly crafted to mesh as an elegant, solidly constructed whole. In this case Lucas and Spielberg had their eye on cinema as a medium of entertainment, and they produce a piece with fun pouring from its truly cinematic workings. A beautiful score, superb setpieces (that have become film history), humour and adventure that rose straight out of a nostalgic awareness of the producers' own childhood joys.
Harrison Ford - almost skipped over - is a gift to the film, making Jones definitively his own. Much of the series' charm comes from its eponymous hero, because he's a hero for the underdog. Succesful and smooth at the right times, he's also at times acutely fallible, clumsy and oblivious in a sympathetic way unique among action heroes. In addition, that he is in his day job a professor and lecturer, who relies on knowledge and intelligence as much as he does his fists (nearly), he is far more a hero for the nerd generation that relishes in the films than the likes of Bruce Willis.