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Ali (2001)
The Biggest Modern Day Character Challenge I can imagine...
Some people never liked Ali. He is one of those characters who is so strong, most people are forced to either love him despite his weaknesses or hate him. He was one figure in American history who never really needed anybody.
He was a conscientious objector against the Viet Nam war, yet he is honored by presidents of the nation he refused to capitulate with in crimes against humanity. His story is that vital to America.
When Ali was still a teenager, he tried his best to prove his personal excellence in a society prejudiced against black people. He won the boxing gold medal at the Rome Olympics in 1960, yet he came home to Louisville and still wasn't "good enough" buy a sandwich at a white restaurant, because he was black.
He then decided if the gold medal wasn't good enough for America, then it wasn't good enough for him. At this point in his life, when he had nothing else; he took the gold medal and threw it in the river.
He observed the wrestler, Gorgeous George, and admired the way he used the negative energy generated by those who disapproved of him as fuel to become the top attraction and make fools of all those who were against him. He wanted to make people boo him. He proclaimed himself as more beautiful than any creature on the planet. He told the world he was the greatest who ever lived. The more they booed him, the more energy it gave him.
He didn't have a mentor or a manager. He assembled a group of Louisville investors to bankroll him, all by himself. He knew exactly what he wanted from the world, reached out and took it. He made a crown out of it. Nobody gave him anything, and nobody can ever take that away.
He discarded the name of a great white civil rights leader during the civil war and reasoned that if he was really free to be what HE was, then he should take a name that he thought was a natural black person's name. It didn't make sense for others who came before him to fight and win the rights to do whatever they wanted, if they were then going to do nothing but turn around and say "Thank You". He decided in order to validate the fight for freedom, his role was to be free.
Muhammad Ali is played by the maybe the only person in the universe who would dare to even attempt it and he succeeds marvelously; not just in a marginal way, but in a big, big way.
This film isn't just swagger, or an imitation of Ali. This is a deep, sensitive, poignant, and romantic story about one of the greatest public figures of the twentieth century. This man truly is a poet and he's lived the life of a poet. To a great extent, Muhammad Ali made his life a manifesto of truth about the American experience. Of all the stories of the twentieth century in America, this was one of the most important ones to tell.
This film has characters galore: from Jamie Foxx as Bundini Brown, who keeps chanting "float like a butterfly, sting like a beeee!" when everyone in the world thought Ali was going to die at the hands of Sonny Liston; Jada PinkettSmith as Ali's devoutly religious and adoring first wife; MichaelMichele playing Veronica Porche, a beautiful jet set model with whomAli had an affair, to a strong performance by Mario Van Peebles as Ali's conscience; Malcolm X, who forces Ali to think against himself and his adoring Black Muslim following in the interests of right and wrong.
This film has irony, choreography, conflict, humor, drama; and accurately portrays the highest highs of any public figure I've seen in my lifetime, as well as some of the most bitter defeats.
This is about male psychology. This is about female psychology. This is about a religious movement in America. This is about a culture in America and many cultures in America and their struggles to live together and treat each other right and fairly, while trying to do the right thing as concerns their own conscience.
The most glaring weaknesses of any sports film ever made are in the sport scenes themselves. This is the strongest point of this film and also makes it the greatest sports film ever made.
I've been a boxing fan since I was eleven. I was a part of crowds who gathered around Muhammad Ali before he became champion. I know what he looks like face to face. I've watched his boxing films dozens of times, and I'll tell you that the scenes in this movie are perfect reenactments of what actually happened in the ring. This couldn't have been done in less than dozens of takes per scene. They throw punches exactly like the fighters in the real fights. They're in the same part of the ring when they throw those punches. They react to the punches the same way. They even get knocked down in the correct parts of the ring in exactly the same way as the fighters who were in the original fight.
I'm not going to comment on whether it should have won an Oscar for best picture, best actor, best supporting actor, best direction, best photography, best choreography, or other features in the film. Maybe it's better that it didn't win those awards in that year because this film is bigger than any year.
This is the sports film that all others will be judged by from here on out by anyone with any sense of realism and art in movies.
This is one for the ages.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
Cold War Western
This was one of many, but perhaps the greatest of a genre of westerns which illustrated and attempted to explain and justify the post World War II foreign policy of the United States.
Like Magnificent Seven and Shane, this movie supports the idea that a little outside help for the good guys in their mano a mano struggle with the "bad guys" (always "they are evil" types who have no reason to be bad, other than they are just bad...and you don't need to know why) who directly confront them is the only thing that will allow right and justice and law and order to prevail.
What makes this movie different from others in the genre and distinguishes it as unique is that in this movie, the aid is given covertly, much like so-called "advisors" in Viet Nam, Panama, Chile, etc...
It was movies like these that helped many young men make the decision to answer (or accept)the call to arms (or usually their "greetings" from the local draft board)and take on the job of fighting the spread of communism in the world.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
An Evil Comedy: One of the Greatest
I know there will be a lot of kvetching about this, but this 1962 film was way, way, WAY ahead of it's time and just as way over the heads of the audience, and indeed, the whole world society that viewed it.
Starting off with hypnotized POW combat soldiers doing needlepoint.
The dream sequences are the core of the movie. They are asides to the audience which ask "Do you really believe this? How silly is this?"
If you think our collective intellect in the US has caught up with this, go look at some political forum where there are (incredibly) still so many red-baiters or individuals who are afraid the free enterprise system is collapsing, even now, with billionaires in Russia and China. We know how many of us have read "Mein Kampf" or "The Communist Manifesto", or smoked a doobie (and inhaled, although with today's improved marijuana, you hardly even have to do that to get totally zonked!), but we are still so intellectually primitive and hypocritical in this country that we can't admit it without fear of being slandered as a subversive or a threat to society.
Yet we have the first president and vice-president who were actually arrested before they took office, and the first president who was ever known to have used cocaine. His political strength was gained mostly by calling the other party socialists and communists long enough and loud enough.
This movie is about anti-communist insanity. It laughed in our faces, but still we took it seriously, just like the guy who says he never beat his wife but he used to punch her down all the time....
Those who made the film laughed all the way to the bank.
The United States is still sick from the irrational fear of social equality posed by socialist thinkers. Even as I write this, the US is still in the grip of this hysteria, and to that extent the comedy in this movie is still relevant.
It is indeed a classic of the cinema, but most people don't have a fig of an idea what it's about. They don't even come close to "getting it". Almost every character in the movie was an avowed opponent of Mc Carthyism. The whole thing was tongue in cheek.
What's doubly interesting, however, about the plot of this story also makes a good template for a straight ahead political suspense thriller, focusing real attention on the workings of a government not unlike the current Bush/Republican administration; but then you could make anyone the bad guys. In addition to the Communists or insane right wingers, the "bad guys" could be the National Rifle Association, the Red Cross or the Lost Boys of Never Never Land.
A political thriller is what the public bought as the original, although it was clearly NOT intended that way. The remake is actually what this 1962 original was mistaken for, kind of like "Destry Rides Again" to "Blazing Saddles", only in this version, the comedy came first, then the more serious version.
The Good Shepherd (2006)
Great Cold War Spy Story
An introspective narrative of the day to day life of a high ranking member of the CIA.
This is not James Bond; and if you expect that, like most of the rest of the reviewers here evidently did, you're going to be disappointed.
Real intelligence gathering isn't Aston Martin driving and Babe chasing. It's about thousands of people who sit days and nights listening to foreign language tapes for key words, hoping the sequences and meanings of those words can be interpreted in such a way as to confirm them as being our adversary's responses to our own sequence of signs; given to trigger those responses and thereby divulge things that were unknown about them or their own intelligence gathering, or who they are and how and what they're doing.
The only times anything exciting happens are when someone from one side or the other flips, and many times that's the only clue you have that your whole operation has been compromised and you, your family, loved ones or your nation are in mortal danger.
If you want to know about the temptation, personal detachment and the degree of secrecy required to do this duty, you'll probably love this movie.
If you're still drawn to the clock-like James Bond Action Hero format (*yawn* "They're in the control room. Must be going to end in fifteen minutes..."), then you'll probably be very bored with this. Some people are drawn to on screen gasoline explosions like moths to flames.
I'll admit: I purposely avoid movies like that. They give me nothing I can use once I leave the theater. I need stories, ideas and characters I can think about. I need irony. I need things that aren't that easy to figure out, like things in my own life or the lives of people I know.
I can understand why some people don't like this movie. The plot is very complicated and we like our movies simple and straightforward.
Conversely, our president is George Bush and most Americans probably believe he's an honest man. Most Americans today probably don't question the story of Al Qaida and the WTC or whether Iraq threatened Saudi Arabia before the first Gulf War or whether the Soviets were a true threat to the US during the Cold War.
However, this story unwinds in such a way as to make you think like the characters in it. You realize how little you know and by realizing that, you learn. You may not get all of it as it goes along, but you will understand it's message when it's done.
It shows but doesn't tell. It's as much "high art" as any film ever gets.