The Usual Choices
Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero)
Oliver! (Carol Reed)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
But how about...
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton)
I am not a macho guy. War is a very bad thing. Killing people is wrong and guns should only be used in athletics. But gosh, this film and The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone are really cool. Men on a do-or-die mission against evil Nazis - you just can't get more righteous than that, glorified violence be damned. The odds are stacked against them; someone is a traitor (or at the very least a prick-in-authority); some good guys get shot (pretty easy trying to guess who it won't be); those who are left and aren't swine, win. All is right with the world.
...and what about...
Petulia (Richard Lester)
The Swinging Sixties really weren't that great a time. Wonderful culture of music and people power of course (which pretty much ended with the accidental or intentional deaths of Jimi, Janis, Otis, Jim, MLK, Bobby K, Brian of the Stones and Moon Mullican), but everything had soured, like a street party that just went on too long. The ache of grief, the opportunities not taken and curdled grooviness runs right through the film, and is spot on. The vapidity of Petulia (the real price she paid for love) meets the we-told-you-so pity of conservative Charlie. So sad, very haunting and a full year before Altamont nailed the coffin shut. Peace.
...not to mention...
The Party (Blake Edwards)
In the grand tradition of Sam Jaffe in Gunga Din, that guy in It Ain't Half Hot Mum who says Cor-Blimey a lot, The Simpsons' Apu, and of course, Spike Milligan's Pakistani Daleks, Peter Sellers does his Indian-stereotype routine (eyes wide; desperately wanting to be considered Anglo-Saxon; lots of "veddy-veddy-gud"s and head-rocking) to undoubted accusations of racism by the residents of the Jewel in the Crown. But this gormless idiot is just so funny! Worrying dampness has occurred a couple of times when I have watched this movie, such is its continual onslaught of physical humour. And besides, although I'm an Aussie, I never took offence to Barry McKenzie, the Fosters-spraying yobbo of Earl's Court or Alvin Purple's high-grossing member or Sir Les Patterson's guzzling & dribbling or a wobble-boarding Rolf (obligatory sound of crickets). Only Meryl Streep telling me honkingly that "a dingo took my baybee" ever made me want to bear arms.
...and one personal unmentionable...
The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tony Richardson)
John Gielgud sums this film up nicely a third of the way through: "This is serious, but some things are silly." The Crimean War was a filthy, incompetence-ridden, ego-driven series of slaughters struggled over by ordinary men who just wanted to go home. Y'know...WAR. Just how accurate the caricatures are of the English Gentlemen Officers is besides the point, because the film makes an error vastly more significant than historical dubiety: it's very boring. It's theme (British Empire = A Class & Race War on an international scale) is pretty much successfully dealt with by the opening animated credits. You don't need to see what comes after (although Trevor Howard as Lord Cardigan is very loud fun). Watch the 3-part BBC Crimean War documentary instead. Then wonder why Russia wanted another crack at it after all this time.
My Top 10 Films of 1968
 |
| 'Please sir, I just want to know what it's like to fart." |
#02 A Bullitt (Yates)
#03 A Petulia (Lester)
#04 A- The Boston Strangler (Fleischer)
#05 A- Rosemary's Baby (Polanski)
#06 A- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
#07 A- Where Eagles Dare (Hutton)
#08 A- The Party (Edwards)
#09 A- Pretty Poison (Black)
#10 A- The Anniversary (Baker)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 B+ Planet of the Apes (Schaffner)
#12 B+ Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
#13 B+ The Producers (Brooks)
#14 B+ The Lion in Winter (Harvey)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B If... [you're right kids: all adults are bastards]
> B Once Upon a Time in the West [never been much of a Sergio operatic western fan]
> B Madigan [time & television have turned this kind of cop film into a cliche...except for the ending]
> B Funny Girl [good singing]
> B The Odd Couple [Jack & Tony were better]
> B The Killing of Sister George [talk, talk, talk...which is okay if you care about the characters]
> B Witchfinder General [historic horror which flirts with being Arty but settles for crude]
> B The Detective [tough Frankie is better than soft Frankie; the police stories are better than the sex stories]
> B Five Card Stud [an Agatha Christie Western]
> B- The Fixer [strangely unengaging]
> B- The Thomas Crown Affair [all I ever recall is "The Windmills of Your Mind" and I hate that song]
> B- The Sergeant [one of those prehistoric "being gay is traumatic" movies]
> B- With Six You Get Eggroll [Doris Day comedy which highlights how underrated Brian Keith was]
> B- The Charge of the Light Brigade [A Personal Unmentionable]
> B- The Subject was Roses [a stage play trying to be a movie]
> B- Lady in Cement [Swingin' Sixties private eye / murder / comedy with all the usual features]
> C Star! [a Julie Andrews musical]
> C Ice Station Zebra [an action film with action but still doesn't seem to move]
> C I Love You, Alice B. Toklas [a 60's rom-com about hippies & hash & hating The Beatles' psychedelic period]
> C Secret Ceremony [both Joseph Losey and Elizabeth Taylor strike (out) again]
> D Barbarella [sci-fi softcore T&A camp which wants to be amusing about sex]
> D The Lost Continent [nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...in a stupid sea monster movie]
> D The Green Berets [the sun sets in the East...hahahaha...John Wayne always had a great sense of humour]
> D The Magus [apart from the bare breasts, what does it all mean?]
> D The Shoes of the Fisherman [a 3 hour Catholic snooze that finishes with an insulting fantasy]
> E No Way to Treat a Lady [a serial killer film with no tension, no revulsion, no scares, no point]
> E Shitty Shitty Bang Bang [sic]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1968 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
The Birthday Party (Friedkin); The Bofors Gun (Gold); The Brotherhood (Ritt); Coogan's Bluff (Siegel); Countdown (Altman); Dark of the Sun / The Mercenaries (Cardiff); The Devil Rides Out / The Devil’s Bride (Fisher); Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Francis); Greetings (De Palma); The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Miller); Hell in the Pacific (Boorman); Hot Millions (Till); Inadmissible Evidence (Page); Isadora (Reisz); The Love Bug (Stevenson); The Night of the Following Day (Cornfield); The Night They Raided Minsky’s (Friedkin); Psych-Out (Rush); Rachel, Rachel (Newman); Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli); The Secret Life of an American Wife (Axelrod); Star! (Wise); The Strange Affair (Greene); The Subject was Roses (Grosbard); The Swimmer (Perry); Targets (Bogdanovich); Twisted Nerve (Boulting); Wild in the Streets (Shear); Will Penny (Gries)
Best Performances of 1968
Jack Albertson (The Subject was Roses)
Ruth Gordon (Rosemary's Baby)
Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter)
Daniel Massey (Star!)
Ron Moody & Jack Wild (Oliver!)
Peter O'Toole (The Lion in Winter)
Vanessa Redgrave (Isadora)
Cliff Robertson (Charly)
Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl)
Joanne Woodward (Rachel, Rachel)
But how about...
Tony Curtis in The Boston Strangler
I am not an avid watcher of Serial Killer Sunday; I think turning these monsters into celebrities by allowing them to publish their memoirs, be interviewed on 60 Minutes and get married in jail to a lonelyheart is disgusting and I am sure was one of the contributing factors which brought down the Roman Empire. But to watch the last twenty minutes of this movie is to view an actor at the zenith of his craft. As Tony mimes his crimes in the barest of rooms, you get as close as you'll ever want to be (if you're normal) to what it's like to fool, control, abuse and kill someone. Sobering. Arresting. Better than Hannibal Hopkins.
...and what about...
Bette Davis in The Anniversary
...not to mention...
Steve McQueen in Bullitt
Steve the rock. Steve the hard-nosed (what does that mean?) cop with a heart of burnished gold. Steve the frozen dinner cook. Steve the sex-machine (Jacqueline Bisset? That's a cheat. People would think even I was a stud if she was hanging off my arm.) Steve the man of one phrase / one volume conversations. Steve the bullshit-hater. Steve, the man of few hubcaps but many stickshift changes. Not for Steve a surname like Lilliecrap or Polkinghorne or Longbottom. No, it's Bullitt. Tough, steely, explosive with a dum-dum head. He doesn't walk out a door; he gets unleashed. Hey, better this than a drug-using, on-the-take, suspect-beater who pats his dog and slaps his wife. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my heroes to actually be, y'know, heroic.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Jane Fonda in Barbarella
Nice breasts.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1968
 |
| "I'd like my cuticles pushed back please." |
#02 Mia Farrow (Rosemary's Baby)
#03 Bette Davis (The Anniversary)
#04 Peter O'Toole (The Lion in Winter)
#05 Peter Sellers (The Party)
#06 Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl)
#07 Steve McQueen (Bullitt)
#08 Tuesday Weld & Anthony Perkins (Pretty Poison)
#09 Kim Hunter (Planet of the Apes)
#10 Ruth Gordon (Rosemary's Baby)
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Trevor Howard (The Charge of the Light Brigade)
#12 Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder (The Producers)
#13 Anthony Hopkins (The Lion in Winter)
#14 Julie Christie & George C. Scott (Petulia)
#15 Coral Browne (The Killing of Sister George)
#16 Dirk Bogarde (The Fixer)
#17 Ron Moody (Oliver!)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Cliff Robertson in Charly [at what point does he change?]
> Katharine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter [bit too old & no match for Pete]
> Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West [I don't believe him for a second]
> Daniel Massey in Star! [did he ever do anything else?]
> Jack Albertson in The Subject was Roses [too up-front & centre for a minor character actor]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1968 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Oliver! (Carol Reed)
SILVER: Bullitt (Peter Yates)
BRONZE: Petulia (Richard Lester)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Peter O'Toole (The Lion in Winter)
SILVER: Peter Sellers (The Party)
BRONZE: Steve McQueen (Bullitt)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Mia Farrow (Rosemary's Baby)
SILVER: Bette Davis (The Anniversary)
BRONZE: Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Tony Curtis (The Boston Strangler)
SILVER: Trevor Howard (The Charge of the Light Brigade)
BRONZE: Anthony Hopkins (The Lion in Winter)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Kim Hunter (Planet of the Apes)
SILVER: Ruth Gordon (Rosemary's Baby)
BRONZE: Coral Browne (The Killing of Sister George)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Anthony Perkins & Tuesday Weld (Pretty Poison)
SILVER: Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder (The Producers)
BRONZE: Julie Christie & George C. Scott (Petulia)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Jack Wild (Oliver!)
SILVER: Mark Lester (Oliver!)
BRONZE: TBA
The Alternate Razzies for 1968 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Ken Hughes)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Rod Steiger (No Way to Treat a Lady)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Elizabeth Taylor (Secret Ceremony)
