Tag: cinema

50 great films with one-word titles

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes when the days are slow and long and hot, I can just sort of geek-out and ponder random things related to my passions. Welcome to today, in which I spent a preposterous amount of time ticking off some of my favorite films that have one-word titles, from “Casablanca,” to “Goodfellas.”

It was a pointless exercise — massively pointless — but it was fun jogging my memory and eventually putting down a litany of terse titles, which always seem a bit more evocative than longer titles. As a lark, I chose 50 great films almost entirely off the top of my pointy head, and present them here in no order whatsoever. (Now it’s your turn.)

“Nashville” (1975); “Sunrise” (1927); “Amadeus” (1984); “Jaws” (1975); “Casablanca” (1942); “Airplane!” (1980); “Freaks” (1932); “Goodfellas” (1990); “Rebecca” (1940); “Heat” (1995):

“Detour” (1945); “Shrek” (2001); “Rushmore” (1998); “Ran” (1985); “Magnolia” (1999); “Oldboy” (2003); “Gilda” (1946); “Brazil” (1985); “Psycho” (1960); “Frankenstein” (1931):

“Duel” (1971); “Manhattan” (1979); “Eraserhead” (1977); “Se7en” (1995); “Yojimbo” (1961); “Notorious” (1946); “Lincoln” (2012); “Boyhood” (2014); “Chinatown” (1974); “Alien” (1979):

“Deliverance” (1972); “Spellbound” (2002); “Babe” (1995); “Sleeper” (1973); “Scarface” (1932); “Network” (1976); “Memento” (2000); “Hamlet” (1996); “M” (1931); “Breathless” (1960):

“Rashomon” (1950); “Stagecoach” (1939); “Ikiru” (1952); “Zelig” (1983); “Macbeth” (1971); “Klute” (1971); “Joker” (2019); “Cabaret” (1972); “Laura” (1944); “Metropolis” (1927) :

There are many more — “Bullitt,” “Contempt,” “Up,” “Repulsion,” “Gaslight,” “Slacker,” “Clueless,” “Thief,” “Locke” — but I wanted to keep the list at a tidy 50. I’d be here till Labor Day if I rounded up all the great single-title movies. But feel free to share your own.

You’ll notice I’ve made some glaring omissions of highly acclaimed films that simply don’t astonish me, and sometimes even rankle: “Fargo,” “Gladiator,” “Vertigo,” “Unforgiven,” “Zodiac” and “Casino.” Argue with me all you want, please.

Movies, yes. Art, not even.

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I’ve aired it here before, and if I haven’t I will now: almost every comic book movie bores me to suicidal tendencies. They make zero narrative sense and are the most cynical kind of anti-art — soulless, silly, self-inflated money machines. They’re a cineplex pox.

That said …

A couple of weeks ago auteur Martin Scorsese volunteered his opinion about Marvel comic book movies. Here are his now notorious words, which sparked howls of defensive dialogue, mostly from comic book movie writers and directors (naturally): 

“That’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

As one might exclaim in the cartoony Marvel universe: kapow!

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Scorsese

Then, yesterday, Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese’s esteemed comrade in canonical ‘70s Hollywood, hurled perhaps a bigger grenade into the controversy:

“When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. … I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”

Not enough? Lauded British filmmaker Ken Loach offered his two pence this week about superhero films: 

“I find them boring. They’re made as commodities … like hamburgers … It’s about making a commodity which will make profit for a big corporation — they’re a cynical exercise. They’re a market exercise and it has nothing to do with the art of cinema.”

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(What superhero movies do I like, you might ask? I love “The Dark Knight,” “Logan,” “Iron Man,” “Unbreakable,” and one of the early “Spider-Man” flicks, I can’t remember which one because there’s like 12.)