Mini reviews of the 100 greatest films (according to Robert the List)

As reviews (as the thread is titled), I appreciate that what I'm doing is useless.
I can not do a review without having recently watched the whole film. And I am basing my assessments on old viewings, with a refresher of various clips in order to compare them against other favourites to the extent required to determine whether they merit a place in the list. It simply isn't viable to rewatch in full every great film I've ever watched in order to compare them (not least because by the time you've finished one, you've partly forgotten the last one), nor even to select the films as I am doing as previously described and then rewatch the whole film in order to review it (not at this stage anyway).

But I'm surprised that what I AM doing, in terms of identifying these great films, and researching interesting explanations of them and information about them, is not of interest. But clearly it isn't.

What I do know, and ultimately what the point of the exercise is I suppose, is that anybody new to films, who followed the list to watch these great 100 films, would have the most incredible film journey going. This IS the greatest ever list of 100 films, PLUS a load of interesting information about each of them.

I can't speak for anyone else, but even though your thread title says "Mini reviews", your reviews are too long for me to read all of them. I have a limited amount of time when I'm online here, and it's usually late at night when I'm very tired, so I tend to skip most of the long posts.

I would probably read some of them if they were much shorter.

__________________
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If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.

OK, well that's interesting feedback, thanks. I understand what you're saying.

My actual 'reviews' are actually woefully short/inadequate. But I'm posting, often quite extensive, background information I've researched (just from picking the interesting stuff from the film's wiki profile) about the film.

I'll reflect on this and whether I should change my approach at this stage. Thanks again.

When I read a review, I'm basically interested in a short (1 or 2 sentences) summary of the movie just so I know what it's about (if I haven't seen it already), and the reviewer's opinion with a short explanation of what they liked or disliked about the movie. (And I do NOT like reviews with spoilers.)

One or two interesting trivia facts might be okay in a review, but too much is a waste of time if I haven't seen the movie yet or if I've seen it and I didn't like it.

If I watch the movie and I liked it, I can read the Wikipedia and IMDB trivia pages about the movie for more information.

If you want to discuss the extra information about a specific movie, you can start a thread that's specific to that movie, or start a trivia thread where anyone can post interesting facts about any movies.

I will continue with the background information from Wikipedia, but might try to make it a little shorter.
Then, in due course, if I get round to it, over the months or years, I will watch each film in turn and as I do write a proper review and edit them into the existing profiles.
I will first revisit the profiles I have done so far and see if I can edit them down at all.

So I've edited the existing Wikipedia summaries to tidy them up a bit.

Some are still long, most notably 2001 lol. Read as much as you want to read.

Your reviews are fine. No need to change for anyone.

61. Le Cousin Jules (doc) 1973 France Dominique Benicheti

Is it a documentary or isn’t it? Well consensus seems to be that it is, even if some of the scenes may be choreographed. It just a sumptuous atmosphere created by gorgeous sights and relaxing sounds of the countryside. It’s a privilege to be invited into Monsieur et Madame Guiteaux’s home, and to gain an insight into their life, the life of 20th century rural France. Also, and regardless of it being a documentary, I think it's a key development in the art of slow or observational cinema, which at its best - like here - can be captivating.

There is no Wikipedia entry for the film.

MUBI’s synopsis is as follows: “An ode to rural France and the simple joys of life, this glorious masterpiece captures the daily routine and rituals of Jules, a blacksmith, living with his wife, Felice, on a small farm in the French countryside.”

Wikipedia does have an entry for the film’s director, which includes the following:
“Dominique Benichetti (16 May 1943 - 29 July 2011) was a French film director and producer known for documentaries, pioneering work on 3D film, animation, and special projects….
Benichetti's documentary "Le Cousin Jules" was produced over the course of 5 years (from April 1968 to March 1973). The film shows the everyday life of Benichetti's cousin Jules Guiteaux and his wife Félicie as they work on their farm in the French countryside. The film (unseen for several decades) was considered a masterpiece when released, showing at a number of festivals and winning awards. It was noted for the Cinemascope work of cinematographer Pierre-William Glen and its stereophonic sound….As of 2012, "Le Cousin Jules" has been restored and is once again being shown in film festivals.”

Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes
Trailer:

62. Don't Look Now 1973 UK Nicholas Roeg

A classy horror/mystery/thriller, maybe my favourite of those which I’d include under the horror umbrella. Clever use of non-linear narrative, which keeps the viewer perplexed and spooked. Christie and Sutherland make for a real and relatable couple.

Wikipedia:
“Don't Look Now…is a 1973 English-language thriller film directed by Nicolas Roeg, adapted from the 1971 short story by Daphne du Maurier. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland portray Laura and (architect) John Baxter, a married couple who travel to Venice following the recent accidental death of their daughter, after John accepts a commission to restore a church. They encounter two sisters, one of whom claims to be clairvoyant and informs them that their daughter is trying to contact them and warn them of danger. John at first dismisses their claims, but starts to experience mysterious sightings himself.
Don't Look Now is an exploration of the psychology of grief and the effect the death of a child can have on a relationship. The film is renowned for its innovative editing style, recurring motifs and themes, and for a controversial sex scene that was explicit for the era. It also employs flashbacks and flashforwards in keeping with the depiction of precognition, but some scenes are intercut or merged to alter the viewer's perception of what is really happening. It adopts an impressionist approach to its imagery, often presaging events with familiar objects, patterns and colours using associative editing techniques.

…Themes
Don't Look Now is an occult-themed thriller in which the conventions of the Gothic ghost story serve to explore the minds of a grief-stricken couple. The film's director, Nicolas Roeg, was intrigued by the idea of making "grief into the sole thrust of the film", noting that "Grief can separate people ... Even the closest, healthiest relationship can come undone through grief." The presence of Christine, the Baxters' deceased daughter, weighs heavily on the mood of the film, as she and the nature of her death are constantly recalled through the film's imagery: there are regular flashbacks to Christine playing in her red coat as well as the sightings of the mysterious childlike figure also wearing a red coat which bears a likeness to her; the constant association of water with death is maintained via a serial-killer sub-plot, which sees victims periodically dragged from the canals…
Water and the colour red are recurring motifs. (SPOLERS)
The associative use of recurring motifs, combined with unorthodox editing techniques, foreshadows key events in the film….The threat of death from falling is also ever present throughout the film: besides Christine falling into the lake, Laura is taken to hospital after her fall in the restaurant, their son Johnny is injured in a fall at boarding school, the bishop overseeing the church restoration informs John that his father was killed in a fall, and John himself is nearly killed in a fall during the renovations. Glass is frequently used as an omen that something bad is about to occur: just before Christine drowns, John knocks a glass of water over, and Johnny breaks a pane of glass; as Laura faints in the restaurant she knocks glassware off the table, and when John almost falls to his death in the church, a plank of wood shatters a pane of glass; finally, shortly before confronting the mysterious red clad figure, John asks the sisters for a glass of water, an item with a symbolic connection to Christine's death.
The plot of the film is preoccupied with misinterpretation and mistaken identity: when John sees Laura on the barge with the sisters, he fails to realise it is a premonition and believes Laura is in Venice with them. John himself is mistaken for a Peeping Tom when he follows Laura to the séance, and ultimately he mistakes the mysterious red-coated figure for a child. The concept of doppelgänger and duplicates feature prominently in the film: reproductions are a constantly recurring motif ranging from reflections in the water, to photographs, to police sketches and the photographic slides of the church John is restoring. Laura comments in a letter to their son that she can't tell the difference between the restored church windows and the "real thing", and later in the film John attempts to make a seamless match between recently manufactured tiles and the old ones in repairing an ancient mosaic. Roeg describes the basic premise of the story as principally being that in life "nothing is what it seems", and even decided to have Donald Sutherland's character utter the line—a scene which required fifteen takes.
Communication is a theme that runs through much of Nicolas Roeg's work, and figures heavily in Don't Look Now. This is best exemplified by the blind psychic woman, Heather, who communicates with the dead, but it is presented in other ways: the language barriers are purposefully enhanced by the decision to not include subtitles translating the Italian dialogue into English, so the viewer experiences the same confusion as John….
Much has been made of the fragmented editing of Don't Look Now, and in Nicolas Roeg's work in general. Time is presented as 'fluid', where the past, present and future can all exist in the same timeframe. John's premonitions merge with the present, such as at the start of the film where the mysterious red-coated figure is seemingly depicted in one of his photographic slides, and when he 'sees' Laura on the funeral barge with the sisters and mistakenly believes he is seeing the present, but in fact it is a vision of the future.
A prominent use of this fragmented approach to time is during the love scene, in which the scenes of John and Laura having sex are intercut with scenes of them dressing afterwards to go out to dinner. …SPOILER At a narrative level the plot of Don't Look Now can be regarded as a self-fulfilling prophecy: it is John's premonitions of his death that set in motion the events leading up to his death. According to the editor of the film, Graeme Clifford, Nicolas Roeg regarded the film as his "exercise in film grammar".
…
Casting
…Roeg was eager to cast Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland from the very start. Initially engaged by other projects, both actors unexpectedly became available. Christie liked the script and was keen to work with Roeg…Sutherland also wanted to make the film but had some reservations about the depiction of clairvoyance in the script. He felt it was handled too negatively and believed that Don't Look Now should be a more "educative film", and that the "characters should in some way benefit from ESP and not be destroyed by it". Roeg was resistant to any changes and issued Sutherland an ultimatum.
…Renato Scarpa was cast as Inspector Longhi, despite not being able to speak English and so he had no idea what he was saying in the film.

Filming
The drowning scene…Sharon Williams, who played Christine, became hysterical when submersed in the pond, despite the rehearsals at the swimming pool going well. A farmer on the neighbouring land volunteered his daughter who was an accomplished swimmer, but who refused to be submerged when it came to filming. In the end, the scene was filmed in a water tank using three girls…
…Venice turned out to be a difficult place to film in, mainly due to the tides, which caused problems with continuity, and the transporting of equipment.
Filming the scene in which John nearly falls to his death while restoring the mosaic in San Nicolò church was also beset by problems, and resulted in Donald Sutherland's life being put in danger. The scene entailed some of the scaffolding collapsing leaving John dangling by a rope, but the stuntman refused to perform the stunt because the insurance was not in order. Sutherland ended up doing it instead, and was attached to a kirby wire as a precaution in case he should fall. Some time after the film had come out, renowned stunt co-ordinator Vic Armstrong commented to Sutherland that the wire was not designed for that purpose, and the twirling around caused by holding on to the rope would have damaged the wire to the extent that it would have snapped if Sutherland had let go.
…the love scene….was in fact an unscripted last minute improvisation by Roeg, who felt that without it there would be too many scenes of the couple arguing.
…
Scoring
…Sex scene controversy
Don't Look Now's sex scene involving Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland caused considerable controversy before its release in 1973. British tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mail, observed at the time that "one of the frankest love scenes ever to be filmed is likely to plunge lovely Julie Christie into the biggest censorship row since Last Tango in Paris". The scene was unusually graphic for the period…
Christie commented that "people didn't do scenes like that in those days", and that she found the scenes difficult to film: "There were no available examples, no role models ... I just went blank and Nic [Roeg] shouted instructions." The scene caused problems with censors on both sides of the Atlantic. The American censor advised Nicolas Roeg explicitly, saying, "We cannot see humping. We cannot see the rise and fall between thighs." The scene's much celebrated fragmented style, in which scenes of the couple having sexual intercourse are intercut with scenes of the couple post-coitally getting dressed to go out to dinner, partly came about through Roeg's attempt to accommodate the concerns of the censors: "They scrutinised it and found absolutely nothing they could object to. If someone goes up, you cut and the next time you see them they're in a different position, you obviously fill in the gaps for yourself. But, technically speaking, there was no 'humping' in that scene." In the end, Roeg only cut nine frames from the sequence, and the film was awarded an R rating in the United States. In Britain, the British Board of Film Censors judged the uncut version to be "tasteful and integral to the plot"…it was given an X rating—an adults only certificate. The sex scene remained controversial for some years after the film's release. The BBC cut it altogether when Don't Look Now premiered on UK television, causing a flood of complaints from viewers.
The intimacy of the scene led to rumours that Christie and Sutherland had unsimulated sex which have persisted for years and that outtakes from the scene were doing the rounds in screening rooms. Michael Deeley, who oversaw the film's UK distribution, claimed on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that Warren Beatty had flown to London and demanded that the sex scene—featuring then girlfriend Julie Christie—be cut from the film. The rumours were seemingly confirmed in 2011 by former Variety editor Peter Bart, who was a Paramount executive at the time. In his book Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob, (and Sex), Bart says he was on set on the day the scene was filmed and could clearly see Sutherland's penis "moving in and out of" Christie. Bart reiterated Warren Beatty's discontent, noting that Beatty had contacted him to complain about what he perceived to be Roeg's exploitation of Christie, and insisting that he be allowed to help edit the film. Sutherland subsequently issued a statement through his publicist stating that the claims were not true, and that Bart did not witness the scene being filmed. Peter Katz, the film's producer, corroborated Sutherland's account that the sex was entirely simulated.
…Reception
…Daphne du Maurier was pleased with the adaptation of her story, and wrote to Nicolas Roeg to congratulate him for capturing the essence of John and Laura's relationship. The film was not received well by Venetians, particularly the councillors who were afraid it would scare away tourists.
…Re-evaluation
The reputation of Don't Look Now has grown since its release and it is now regarded as a key work in horror cinema….”

Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
Trailer:
Director interview:

It can certainly be stressful to invest a lot of time and effort into a thread, only for very few people to reply to it. I felt this when I posted my Andrei Rublev and Eraserhead analyses here some time ago. I just think calling people out by saying you expect better from a group of film fans isn't the best way to go about it and can even be counter productive. It might help to post fewer entries, so people have less catch up to do when they come across the thread.

63. Badlands 1973 USA Terrence Malick

It’s mainly the landscapes. I like the soundtrack too though. There’s one tune that plays, a little bit like the sound of brushing through lots of tiny bells chiming, or perhaps a xylophone, that reminds me of Cambodia, a country I love. The film though is an American icon. It's also an interesting study of characters committing evil acts, and normalising it, e.g. Spacek "why are you putting him there?" Sheen "Just want to keep him out of the sun". He's dead. Sheen just shot him.

Wikipedia:
“Badlands is a 1973 American neo-noir (author’s note: is it???????) period crime drama film written, produced and directed by Terrence Malick, in his directorial debut. The film stars Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, and follows…a 15-year old who goes on a killing spree with her partner…While the story is fictional, it is loosely based on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in 1958.
…Cast…Director Terrence Malick makes a cameo as the man at the rich man's door, while Sheen's sons – Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez – appear briefly as two boys sitting under a lamppost outside Holly's house.
Production
Writing and casting…
Sissy Spacek, in only her second film, was the first actor cast. Malick found her small-town Texas roots and accent were perfect for the part of the naive impressionable high school girl. The director included her in his creative process, asking questions about her life…Several up-and-coming actors were auditioned for the part of Kit Carruthers. When Martin Sheen was suggested by the casting director, Malick was hesitant, thinking he was too old for the role. Spacek wrote in her autobiography that "the chemistry was immediate. He was Kit. And with him, I was Holly." Sheen based his characterization of Kit on the actor James Dean.
…Filming
…Malick's first cinematographer, Brian Probyn, quit mid-shoot after balking at the director's unorthodox methods. He was replaced by Tak Fujimoto then by Stevan Larner who finished the film.
…Though Malick paid close attention to period detail, he did not want it to overwhelm the picture. "I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum," he said. "Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time."…
…Soundtrack
The film makes repeated use of the short composition Gassenhauer from Carl Orff's and Gunild Keetman's Schulwerk, and also uses other tunes by Erik Satie, Nat "King" Cole, Mickey & Sylvia and James Taylor.
…Release
…Vincent Canby, who saw the film at the festival debut, called it a "cool, sometimes brilliant, always ferociously American film"”

Runtime: 93 minutes
Full movie:

Haha. Yes I can be a bit needy, and a situation like this it's inevitable it's going to come out from time to time with a strop haha.
Thanks for participating, and appreciating the entries.
I can't paste fewer entries though, it's 100 films!!!

I'd rank Badlands around the middle of what I've seen from Malick so far. I love just about everything I've seen from him though. I'm sure half this forum can guess what my favorite Malick film is.

Badlands is awesome and inspired so many countless homages. From bits of True Romance to Se7en.

Possibly my 2nd favorute Malick after Tree of Life. I could watch Badlands right now or almost any time it's that iconic, that's always a sign of a film you love.

I'm going with either Days of Heaven or Tree of Life?

64. Barry Lyndon 1975 UK Stanley Kubrick

3 hours long, and I actually find the first 90 minutes at best quite tiresome. In fact, I feel that Kubrick is just fooling around, making fun of period dramas. And then finally he starts taking it seriously around the time Marisa’s character appears. And from then on it is absolutely wonderful. Spellbinding on the eye, and the dialogue is also fantastic. The Reverend Munt is also one of my favourite film characters. I love his expressions, and the way he protects Lady Lyndon. But it also turns into a drama that you actually find yourself caring about. The more you like Barry Lyndon the film, the more you dislike Barry Lyndon the character. But then after all that – perhaps like a family member you don’t get on with – you find yourself (as you did so when he was robbed by highwaymen all those years ago) with some sympathy towards him. It’s an interesting experience, but the main thing is the incredible visuals: the candles, the costumes, the barn, Marisa’s face. Absolute art. When I think of cinematic masterpiece, one of my first thoughts is the final 90 minutes of Barry Lyndon.

Wikipedia:
“Barry Lyndon is a 1975 epic historical black comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. Narrated by Michael Hordern, and starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter and Hardy Krüger, the film recounts the early exploits and later unravelling of an 18th-century Anglo-Irish rogue and gold digger who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position.
Kubrick began production on Barry Lyndon after his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. He had originally intended to direct a biopic on Napoleon, but lost his financing because of the commercial failure of the similar 1970 Dino De Laurentiis-produced Waterloo. Kubrick eventually directed Barry Lyndon, set partially during the Seven Years' War, utilising his research from the Napoleon project. Filming began in December 1973 and lasted roughly eight months, taking place in England, Ireland, and Germany.
The film's cinematography has been described as ground-breaking. Especially notable are the long double shots, usually ended with a slow backwards zoom, the scenes shot entirely in candlelight, and the settings based on William Hogarth paintings. The exteriors were filmed on location in England, Ireland, and Germany, with the interiors shot mainly in London. The production had problems related to logistics, weather, and politics (Kubrick feared that he might be an IRA hostage target)
…Part I: "By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon"
…Part II: "Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon"
…Cast
…Critic Tim Robey suggests that the film "makes you realise that the most undervalued aspect of Kubrick's genius could well be his way with actors." He adds that the supporting cast is a "glittering procession of cameos, not from star names but from vital character players."
The cast featured Leon Vitali as the older Lord Bullingdon, who then became Kubrick's personal assistant, working as the casting director on his following films, and supervising film-to-video transfers for Kubrick. Their relationship lasted until Kubrick's death.
…Thematic analysis
A main theme explored in Barry Lyndon is one of fate and destiny. Barry is pushed through life by a series of key events, some of which seem unavoidable. As Roger Ebert says, "He is a man to whom things happen."
He declines to eat with the highwayman Captain Feeney, where he would most likely have been robbed, but is robbed anyway farther down the road. The narrator repeatedly emphasizes the role of fate as he announces events before they unfold on screen…
Another major theme is between father and son. Barry lost his father at a young age and throughout the film he seeks and attaches himself to father-figures. Examples include his uncle, Grogan, and the Chevalier. When given the chance to be a father, Barry loves his son to the point of spoiling him. This contrasts with his role as a (step)father to Lord Bullingdon, whom he disregards and punishes….
Production
…So heightened was the secrecy surrounding the film that "Even Berenson, when Kubrick first approached her, was told only that it was to be an 18th-century costume piece [and] she was instructed to keep out of the sun in the months before production, to achieve the period-specific pallor he required."
Screenplay
…The film departs from the novel in several ways. In Thackeray's writings, events are related in the first person by Barry himself. A comic tone pervades the work, as Barry proves both a raconteur and an unreliable narrator. Kubrick's film, by contrast, presents the story objectively. Though the film contains voice-over (by actor Michael Hordern), the comments expressed are not Barry's, but those of an omniscient narrator.
…Principal photography
…Many of the exteriors were shot in Ireland, playing "itself, England, and Prussia during the Seven Years' War."[7] Kubrick and cinematographer Alcott drew inspiration from "the landscapes of Watteau and Gainsborough"…Several of the interior scenes were filmed in Powerscourt House, an 18th-century mansion in County Wicklow. The house was destroyed in an accidental fire several months after filming (November 1974), so the film serves as a record of the lost interiors…The Wicklow Mountains are visible, for example, through the window of the saloon during a scene set in Berlin… Other locations included Kells Priory, County Kilkenny…Huntington Castle, County Carlow (exterior) and Dublin Castle, County Dublin (the chevalier's home). Some exterior shots were also filmed at Waterford Castle, County Waterford (now a luxury hotel and golf course) and Little Island, Waterford. Moorstown Castle in County Tipperary also featured. Several scenes were filmed at Castletown House in Celbridge, County Kildare; outside Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, and at Youghal, County Cork.
The filming took place in the backdrop of some of the most intense years of the Troubles in Ireland, during which the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA) was waging an armed campaign in order to unite the island. On 30 January 1974, while filming in Dublin City's Phoenix Park, shooting had to be cancelled due to the chaos caused by 14 bomb threats. One day a phone call was received and Kubrick was given 24 hours to leave the country; he left within 12 hours. The phone call alleged that the Provisional IRA had him on a hit list and Harlan recalls "Whether the threat was a hoax or it was real, almost doesn't matter ... Stanley was not willing to take the risk. He was threatened, and he packed his bag and went home." Production of the film was one-third completed when this occurred, and it was rumored that the film would be abandoned. Nonetheless, Kubrick continued shooting the remainder of the film at locations in England, mainly southern England, Scotland, West Germany, and East Germany.
Locations in England include Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire; Castle Howard, North Yorkshire (exteriors of the Lyndon estate, "Castle Hickham"); Corsham Court, Wiltshire (various interiors and the music room scene); Petworth House, West Sussex (chapel); Stourhead, Wiltshire (lake and temple); Longleat, Wiltshire; Wilton House, Wiltshire (interior and exterior) and Lavenham Guildhall at Lavenham in Suffolk (amputation scene). Filming took place at Dunrobin Castle (exterior and garden as Spa) in Sutherland, Scotland. Locations in West Germany include Ludwigsburg Palace in Ludwigsburg and Hohenzollern Castle in Hechingen, both near Stuttgart. Frederick II of Prussia's Neues Palais at Potsdam near Berlin, at the time East Germany, was also used as a location”
Cinematography
Special ultra-fast lenses were used for Barry Lyndon to allow filming using only natural light.
The film, as with "almost every Kubrick film", is a "showcase for [a] major innovation in technique." While 2001: A Space Odyssey had featured "revolutionary effects," and The Shining would later feature heavy use of the Steadicam, Barry Lyndon saw a considerable number of sequences shot "without recourse to electric light." The film's cinematography was overseen by director of photography John Alcott (who won an Oscar for his work), and is particularly noted for the technical innovations that made some of its most spectacular images possible. To achieve photography without electric lighting (for) "the many densely furnished interior scenes … meant shooting by candlelight," which is known to be difficult in still photography, "let alone with moving images."
Kubrick was "determined not to reproduce the set-bound, artificially lit look of other costume dramas from that time."[7] After "tinker[ing] with different combinations of lenses and film stock," the production obtained three super-fast 50mm lenses (Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7) developed by Zeiss for use by NASA in the Apollo Moon landings, which Kubrick had discovered. These super-fast lenses "with their huge aperture (the film actually features the lowest f-stop in film history) and fixed focal length" were problematic to mount, and were extensively modified into three versions by Cinema Products Corp. for Kubrick to gain a wider angle of view, with input from optics expert Richard Vetter of Todd-AO. The rear element of the lens had to be 2.5 mm away from the film plane, requiring special modification to the rotating camera shutter. This allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot scenes lit in candlelight to an average lighting volume of only three candela, "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age." In addition, Kubrick had the entire film push-developed by one stop.
Although Kubrick and Alcott sought to avoid electric lighting where possible, most shots were achieved with conventional lenses and lighting, but were lit to deliberately mimic natural light rather than for compositional reasons. In addition to potentially seeming more realistic, these methods also gave a particular period look to the film which has often been likened to 18th-century paintings (which of course depict a world devoid of electric lighting), in particular owing "a lot to William Hogarth, with whom Thackeray had always been fascinated.
The film is widely regarded as having a stately, static, painterly quality mostly due to its lengthy, wide-angle long shots. To illuminate the more notable interior scenes, artificial lights called "Mini-Brutes" were placed outside and aimed through the windows, which were covered in a diffuse material to scatter the light evenly through the room rather than being placed inside for maximum use as most conventional films do. In some instances, the natural daylight was allowed to come through, which when recorded on the film stock used by Kubrick showed up as blue-tinted compared to the incandescent electric light.
Despite such slight tinting effects, this method of lighting not only gave the look of natural daylight coming in through the windows, but it also protected the historic locations from the damage caused by mounting the lights on walls or ceilings and the heat from the lights. This helped the film "fit ... perfectly with Kubrick's gilded-cage aesthetic – the film is consciously a museum piece, its characters pinned to the frame like butterflies." (https://theasc.com/articles/flashback-barry-lyndon)
…
The film's period setting allowed Kubrick to indulge his penchant for using classical music, and the film score includes pieces by Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Paisiello, Mozart, and Schubert. The piece most associated with the film, however, is the main title music, Handel's Sarabande from the Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437). Originally for solo harpsichord, the versions for the main and end titles are performed with strings, timpani, and continuo. The score also includes Irish folk music, including Seán Ó Riada's song "Women of Ireland", arranged by Paddy Moloney and performed by The Chieftains. "The British Grenadiers" also features in scenes with Redcoats marching.
Reception
Contemporaneous
The film "was not the commercial success Warner Bros. had been hoping for" within the United States, although it fared better in Europe….
This mixed reaction saw the film (in the words of one retrospective review) "greeted, on its release, with dutiful admiration – but not love. Critics ... rail[ed] against the perceived coldness of Kubrick's style, the film's self-conscious artistry and slow pace. Audiences, on the whole, rather agreed".
(https://web.archive.org/web/20190826...rgeous-period/)
…
Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "the motion picture equivalent of one of those very large, very heavy, very expensive, very elegant and very dull books that exist solely to be seen on coffee tables. It is ravishingly beautiful and incredibly tedious in about equal doses, a succession of salon quality still photographs—as often as not very still indeed."
The Washington Post wrote, "It's not inaccurate to describe 'Barry Lyndon' as a masterpiece, but it's a deadend masterpiece, an objet d'art rather than a movie. It would be more at home, and perhaps easier to like, on the bookshelf, next to something like 'The Age of the Grand Tour,' than on the silver screen."
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote that "Kubrick has taken a quick-witted story" and "controlled it so meticulously that he's drained the blood out of it," adding, "It's a coffee-table movie; we might as well be at a three-hour slide show for art-history majors."

Runtime: 3 hours
Trailer:
Clip:

65. Mirror1975 Soviet Union Andrei Tarkovsky

I’ll come back to my own review in due course. I want to watch it again.

Wikipedia:
“Mirror…is a 1975 Soviet avant-garde drama filmdirected by Andrei Tarkovsky and written by Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Misharin. The film features (amongst others)…Tarkovsky's wife Larisa Tarkovskaya, and his mother Maria Vishnyakova. Innokenty Smoktunovsky contributed voiceover dialogue...
Mirror portrays a dying poet pondering his memories. It is loosely autobiographical, unconventionally structured, and draws on a wide variety of source material, including newsreel footage of major moments in Soviet history and the poetry of the director's father, Arseny Tarkovsky. Its cinematography slips between color, black-and-white, and sepia. Its nonlinear narrative has delighted and frustrated critics and audiences for decades. The film's loose flow of oneiric images has been compared with the stream of consciousness technique associated with modernist literature.
Mirror initially polarized critics, audiences, and the Soviet film establishment. Tarkovsky devised the original concept in 1964, but the Soviet government did not approve funding for the film until 1973 and limited the film's release amid accusations of cinephilic elitism. Many viewers found its narrative incomprehensible, although Tarkovsky noted that many non-film critics understood the film. Since its release, it has been reappraised as one of the greatest films of all time…It is especially popular with Russians, for many of whom it is the most beloved of Tarkovsky's works.
...
Mirror depicts the thoughts, emotions and memories of Aleksei, a Soviet poet, as a child, adolescent, and 40-year-old. The film freely switches between three different timeframes: prewar (c. 1935), World War II (1940s), and postwar (1960s or '70s). The drama is entirely shown from Aleksei's perspective; the adult Aleksei's face is never shown, and his body only briefly glimpsed. Tarkovsky said that because a memory reveals "what [a person] thinks, how he thinks, and what he thinks about", a film collecting a man's memories "build[s] up a graphic and clearly-defined picture of him" without needing to show the man himself.
…To represent the real-life experience of a man going over old memories, the film's structure is discontinuous and nonchronological, lacks a conventional plot, and combines incidents, dreams, memories, newsreel footage, and Arseny Tarkovsky's poems in voiceover. Scenes are connected not by time or place, but by particular individuals and motifs that serendipitously come to mind…
The film encourages viewers to embrace its nonlinear, seemingly illogical narrative by including an opening scene in which a physician examines a man with a stutter. The physician asks the patient to concentrate on his hands and then suddenly relax. None of this seems related to his stutter, but the therapy releases the patient's mind, and he triumphantly says, "I can talk."
…
Cast
Several of the characters are played by the same actors.

Margarita Terekhova as the young Maria (Aleksei's mother) and Natalia (Aleksei's ex-wife)
Maria Vishnyakova (Tarkovsky's mother) as the elderly Maria
Ignat Daniltsev as the adolescent Aleksei and Ignat (Aleksei's son)
Filipp Yankovsky as the child Aleksei
Innokenty Smoktunovsky as the adult Aleksei (voice only)
…Larisa Tarkovskaya (Tarkovsky's wife) as Nadezhda, Maria's countryside neighbor
…Arseny Tarkovsky as narrator/poet (voice only)
Themes and interpretation
While highly acclaimed, Mirror continues to be viewed as enigmatic. Natasha Synessios wrote that it is closer in structure to a musical piece than a narrative film, noting that Tarkovsky "always maintained that he used the laws of music as the film's organisational principle...emphasis placed not on the logic, but the form, of the flow of events."…Howard Hampton argued that the work's central subject is "the inescapable persistence of the past".
Mirror draws heavily on Tarkovsky's childhood. The film frequently parallels events in Tarkovsky's life, such as the evacuation from Moscow to the countryside during the war; a father who left the family and only returned after the war; and his mother's experiences as a proofreader at a state-owned printing press. Both of Tarkovsky's parents participate in the film: the father reads his poems and the mother portrays an elderly version of Aleksei's mother. According to Tarkovsky's sister Marina, the film also reflects Tarkovsky's guilt about divorcing his first wife, Irma Raush. She said that Tarkovsky named the film Mirror because he "understood that he had followed in the footsteps of our father, who had also divorced our mother".
Tarkovsky said making the film was personally therapeutic, as it allowed him to move on from his memories.
…Tarkovsky wrote, "The hero of Mirror was a weak, selfish man incapable of loving even those dearest to him for their sake alone, looking for nothing in return—he is only justified by the torment of soul which assails him towards the end of his days as he realizes that he has no means of repaying the debt he owes to life."

Production
Writing
The concept of Mirror dates to 1964, when Tarkovsky wrote down his idea for a film about the dreams and memories of a man, without the man appearing on screen. The first episodes of Mirror were written while Tarkovsky was working on Andrei Rublev. These episodes were published in 1970 as a short story titled A White Day. The title was taken from a 1942 poem by his father, Arseny Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky separately considered writing a novella about a boy who is evacuated to the countryside during World War II and is forced to train at a military school, but shelved the idea after deciding there was not enough material for a standalone work. 
In 1968, after finishing Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky went to the cinematographer's resort in Repino intending to write the script for The Mirror with Aleksandr Misharin. This script was titled Confession and was proposed to the film committee at Goskino...but the proposal was rejected. The main reason was most likely the complex and unconventional script. Moreover, Tarkovsky and Misharin clearly said that they did not know what the film's final form would be; this was to be determined in the process of filming. After the script was rejected, Tarkovsky made the film Solaris. His diary entries showed that he was still eager to make the rejected film.
…At various times, the script and the film were titled Confession, Redemption, Martyrology, Why are you standing so far away?, The Raging Stream and A White, White Day (sometimes also translated as A Bright, Bright Day). While filming, Tarkovsky decided to title the film Mirror. The film features several mirrors, with some scenes shot in reflection.
Studio approval
The new head of Goskino, Filipp Ermash, approved the script in the summer of 1973. Tarkovsky was given a budget of 622,000 Rbls and 7,500 metres (24,606 feet) of Kodak film, corresponding to 110 minutes, or roughly three takes, assuming a film length of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet). But in July 1974, after Tarkovsky finished the film, Ermash rejected it as incomprehensible. Infuriated by the rejection, Tarkovsky toyed with the idea of making a film outside the Soviet Union. Goskino ultimately approved Mirror without any changes in fall 1974.

…Filming
…The country house in the film was based on photographs of the house where Tarkovsky grew up…
Tarkovsky insisted on shooting the film without a clear idea of its structure, saying it needed to "take shape as if it were by itself."  Much of the script was rewritten during the shoot. Tarkovsky was down to 400 metres of film when he came up with the idea of recasting Terekhova as Aleksei's wife. She had initially played only the mother.

…Editing
Tarkovsky said that a "prodigious amount of work went into editing Mirror". There are about 200 shots in Mirror, very few for a film of its length. Tarkovsky rejected editing as a means of creating, or determining, rhythm, believing that editing "means allowing the separate scenes and shots to come together spontaneously". It was only after "one last, desperate rearrangement" that the "film was born". He felt it was a "miracle" that Mirror held together.
Tarkovsky was extremely pleased with the final cut, saying, "when I finished making Mirror[,] [c]hildhood memories which for years had given me no peace suddenly vanished, as if they had melted away, and at last I stopped dreaming about the house where I had lived so many years before."

Release
Tarkovsky wanted to premiere the film in competition at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, but the Soviet government (which could submit only one film to the festival per year) chose Sergei Bondarchuk's They Fought for Their Country instead. The festival's managing director, Maurice Bessy, was sympathetic to Tarkovsky, and had attempted several times to acquire Mirror for Cannes. Upon hearing that Mirror was not allowed to be shown, he threatened to ban They Fought for Their Country from the festival. The Soviets pushed back, insisting that "Soviet cinematographic circles refused ... to accept the idea that Tarkovsky was the only filmmaker of international stature."
Mirror never had an official premiere, only a limited, second-category release with just 73 copies. According to The New York Times, the film premiered in two Moscow theaters in April 1975.
In 2022, Mosfilm posted the full movie, with English subtitles, on YouTube. The film was also restored in 2K and distributed in the United States by The Criterion Collection.
Reception
…Many audience members walked out of theatrical screenings, but those who liked the film were ardent in their praise. In his book Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky reproduced fan mail from a variety of sources, from working-class film-goers to physicists at the Russian Academy of Sciences.”

Runtime: 1 hour 46 minutes
Trailer:

The Tree of Life

It's another long one coming up.
In fact, probably the next 4 are going to be long ones in addition to the previous 2 already.
This is not an intentional trend, it's just that these are ****ing famous movies and a lot has been written about them, including some potentially interesting stuff.
...

>Barry Lyndon
>In fact, I feel that Kubrick is just fooling around, making fun of period dramas.

I feel this is kind of obvious. There's a wry wit to how he presents the film, especially with matter-of-fact way that the narrator often describes the events...possibly the best is when the narrator describes the suicide attempt by Barry's wife which is a very serious moment but is presented in a pretty hilarious manner.

It's even more obvious in his portrayal of duels where each one is shown as a clumsy affair between two very nervous people rather than these epic showdowns between rivals. I feel this level of humor is in all of Kubrick's stuff...he has a better sense of humor than people realize.

That said, I did find the movie dragged a little but I agree on how gorgeous everything is...there's some amazing shots of the sky and backdrops, probably more-so than any of his films. I will disagree on not liking the first half...I felt that had some of the better moments.