Another year, another 134 flicks watched, if my running list is to be believed. I know it’s already 2020 and I should have published this a week or so ago, but I waited to finalize my list on the off-chance that some late-December release might push its way onto the list. Spoiler alert: none did.
As usual, this list compiles the films I enjoyed most this year, regardless of what year they were actually released, the better to reflect the streaming-dominant viewing model that most people, including me, are following these days. My favorites this year are a fairly eclectic grab bag, ranging from French gangster flicks to wild Bollywood spectacles. Only two of them were actually released in 2019, which tells you as much about my viewing habits as the quality of recent movies I’ve seen. So, with no further ado, here are my favorites of a busy year in alphabetical order.
And God Said to Cain (1970) – This fantastically atmospheric spaghetti western stars Klaus Kinski as a man who’s spent a decade slaving away in a chain gang for a crime he didn’t commit. He’s granted a pardon as the film begins, then heads back to his old hometown for some good old-fashioned vengeance on those who set him up. Kinski finds the town has been taken over by a corrupt political boss who’s grooming his son to be President. Everything and everyone in town is in thrall to this evil patriarch, leaving Kinski to his own devices to set things right. So over the course of one stormy night, he hunts down and kills those he holds responsible – which is pretty much everyone in town. And God Said to Cain plays as a horror movie as much as a spaghetti western, except that we’re on the side of the killer. The corrupt politico forces all of the town’s residents to flee for the night, establishing the place as a kind of dark ghost town occupied only by Kinski and those he’s hunting. One of my favorite aspects of the flick is the town’s slowly ringing bell tower, which Kinski sets up to keep tolling as he picks off his enemies one by one. The whole atmosphere is truly creepy and claustrophobic; you almost feel as trapped as the bad guys Kinski is hunting. That said, there’s also a bit of a dark comic streak that runs through the film, as the corrupt patriarch goes to some absurd lengths to try and convince his clueless son that nothing is amiss. A dinner scene between the two is a highlight, as gunfire erupts outside and the father tries to pretend that it’s just the wind. Gunfire? What gunfire? A really original take on a story that has been told a million times in Italian westerns, And God Said to Cain is the best of the genre that I’ve seen in some time.
The Asphalt Jungle (1950) – I’m a sucker for a heist flick, and this is undoubtedly one of the best ever made. John Huston’s direction owes quite a bit to the neo-realist flicks of the late 40s, using real locations around Los Angeles to create a gritty, down-and-dirty believability. The flick helped establish many of the now-common tropes of the heist caper film, with the mastermind assembling his team, committing the crime, then dealing with the repercussions of what’s inevitably gone wrong. Sam Jaffe plays the meticulous ex-con who’s behind the whole thing, portraying the crook as a businesslike character who strives to be above the fray. Sterling Hayden turns in one of his best performances as Dix, the ‘tough guy’ brought into the scheme to serve as muscle. He wants this one big score to provide him with enough cash to buy back his family’s horse farm, and his yearning for another life provides a real edge of pathos to his story. The heist itself is masterfully done, as Huston trails the criminals for over ten minutes as they break into the jewelry store and make their getaway. The scene was an acknowledged influence on what’s probably the best heist in cinema history, the jewelry store robbery in 1955’s Rififi. Of course, it’s also been at least an indirect influence on every heist committed to film since its release. The flick is also notable for giving Marilyn Monroe her first important role, as the rich fence’s mistress/alibi. This is a great film in every way, filled with memorable cinematography, a perfectly calibrated plot, and winning performances from literally every person in the cast. The only real question is why it took me so long to see it.
Cash on Demand (1961) – This tightly-wound thriller from Britain’s Hammer Studios stars their resident horror superstar Peter Cushing in a role quite different from the mad scientists and crusading adventurers he usually played. Here, he stars as the uptight manager of a London bank branch, the kind of remote, emotionless boss who would never think of relating to his employees on a personal level. He’s clearly based somewhat on Ebenezer Scrooge, and the film plays as a kind of oddball modern take on the Christmas Carol story. Cushing’s world is thrown into turmoil a few days before Christmas when a man claiming to be from the bank’s insurance company shows up. Played to the scheming hilt by Andre Morell, the “insurance man” turns out to be a professional heister who’s snared Cushing in a blackmail-type set-up that forces him to play along as the criminal loots his vault. I don’t want to give too much away, since a lot of the fun stems from the twists and turns that crop up as the criminal and the bank manager struggle to keep what they’re up to a secret. You can tell that the film was originally based on a stage play, as the entire flick takes place in one set – most of it in one room. It’s the one-on-one interactions between Morell and Cushing that drive the flick forward and ratchet up the pressure little by little. Morell is absolutely perfect as the heister, delivering a wry, subtle performance that only occasionally lets his character’s menace peek through his urbane façade.
Diego Maradona (2019) – The title of this amazing documentary about the Argentine soccer legend displays his first and last names in different fonts, a subtle way of stressing one of the film’s main themes. Namely, that the man had two distinct personalities – Diego, the shy 15-year-old soccer prodigy who was devoted to family and friends; and Maradona, the flashy, flamboyant soccer god he became. From the very film’s very first moments, it drives home the claustrophobic existence he was forced to live, as we join Maradona inside a small car as it navigates its way to his introductory press conference in Napoli. Time and again, the film shows Maradona hemmed in on all sides, struggling to move as a crowd of worshippers tries to get their hands on him. Rather than try to depict the man’s whole life, it focuses on his years playing for Napoli in the Italian Serie A. These years were both the apex of his career, with a World Cup title, Serie A crowns, and a UEFA Cup trophy. They were also the beginning of the end, as his hard-partying lifestyle caught up with him in a big way, eventually leading to FIFA banning him from the sport. The film assumes you have some knowledge of Maradona beforehand, and it whizzes through his early career in a matter of moments. Watching this, it’s hard to escape the feeling that his downfall was inevitable. The people around him literally worshipped him as a god – several years of this would go to anyone’s head. True to its Italian setting, the whole story plays as an operatic tragedy, with a central character whose breathtaking talents could never overcome a heartbreaking penchant for self-destruction.
John Wick, Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019) —In this completely over-the-top third iteration of the franchise, Keanu Reeves’ master assassin flees New York for Morocco. He reunites with one-time ally Sofia (Halle Berry), an ex-killer who’s now running the Casablanca version of the Continental, the global network of assassins’ hotels. Sofia’s got a pair of trained attack dogs that work with her, which results in one of the wildest combat scenes you’ll ever see when she and Wick have to escape from a Moroccan strongman’s Casbah compound. The dizzying sequence features both actors and dogs working in perfect harmony to kill dozens (and dozens) of determined killers, and Berry proves herself more than up to the challenge of matching Reeves blow for blow.
That amazing scene is just one of the many show-stopping action set pieces featured in the flick. The fight choreography on display in John Wick 3 is at the very apex of the form, with long takes that showcase the performers’ physicality and the director’s intuitive understanding of how to present on-screen mayhem. Among the highlights is an eye-popping sequence set in a hall lined with display cases filled with exotic knives, in which Wick and the baddies take turns breaking the cases and whipping knives at one another in the hallway’s tight confines. It’s absolutely wild, as is the aforementioned Casbah dust-up with Berry and her dogs. There’s a motorcycle chase with sword-wielding baddies, several intense gunfights, and a string of hand-to-hand dust-ups, including the three-person fight between Reeves and a pair of knife-wielding killers that features more broken glass than the finale of Jackie Chan’s Police Story. That’s a lot of glass! Reeves is once again perfect in the title role, underplaying everything even as events spiral increasingly out of control. I particularly love that whether “hiding out” in Casablanca or dying of heatstroke in the African desert, he never takes off his black tie and jacket. You can sense the filmmakers in places asking themselves how they can top what they’ve done before. Somewhat surprisingly, they keep coming up with ways to do just that.
Murder by Contract (1958) – This fantastic crime flick from the late 50s stars Vince Edwards as a mob hitman who finds himself confronted with a victim he just can’t kill. Even though it was made in 1958, the film has a distinctly modern feel to it. Director Irving Lerner delivers the tale with a spare, detached style that lends a streak of realism to every scene. His camera often seems as focused on the settings as the people within them, lingering on spaces after people leave the area for a few extra beats. A simple, repetitive electric guitar score lends an edgy, tense mood to the proceedings. The film was shot on location around Los Angeles, and Lerner takes an almost neorealist approach to his cinematography, shooting everything from a detached remove. There’s a particularly great sequence early on in which Edwards commits a murder in a barber shop, the whole thing shot without so much as a line of dialogue. The bulk of the film concerns Edwards being escorted around L.A. by a pair of hoods, ostensibly so he can plan out the murder of a female target. After a couple of mishaps, he finds himself the target of the mob’s anger. This is a truly great movie, with a kind of European sensibility that you don’t often find in American studio flicks of the era. It comes across as half art film, half pulpy thriller, very much in the way of Godard’s Breathless. I know, I’m really heaping on the praise here, but this is easily one of the best noirs I’ve ever seen. Edwards is incredible as the taciturn killer, delivering a couple of great monologues about his philosophy that I’m sure Quentin Tarantino must love. Martin Scorcese has even admitted lifting the Travis Bickle workout scenes in Taxi Driver from this flick almost shot for shot. This is a film that any film buff should see right this very second.
Night Nurse (1931) – This blast of pre-code hijinx stars a youthful Barbara Stanwyck as Lora, the night nurse of the title. She uses her sex appeal to wheedle her way into a job as a nursing trainee, flirting with the chief of staff when they get caught in a revolving door together. Once at the hospital, Lora treats a bootlegger for a bullet wound and earns his undying gratitude when she doesn’t report the injury to the police. She then takes a job as a private nurse looking after the sick children of a perpetually drunken society dame. Lora soon begins to suspect that something is amiss at the house. While the drunken mother reels from one party to the next, her lover/chauffeur (Clark Gable) is slowly poisoning the kids. It seems he’s planning to steal their trust fund. Anyway, with the help of a kindly doctor and the aforementioned bootlegger, Lora saves the day and gets her revenge on Gable’s evil chauffeur. The whole thing is fairly tame by modern standards, but I guess this was pretty controversial back in the day. Movies like Night Nurse and director William Wellman’s other 1931 thriller The Public Enemy were scandalous enough to lead to the Hays Code and its decades of censorship. The crass immorality of most of its characters is certainly notable, although I suspect it’s the multiple shots of nurses getting undressed that most outraged the bluenoses. Anyway, I found Night Nurse to be a fun blast of pre-code mayhem. You’ve got to love a flick that uses the villain’s murder as a closing punch line.
Quai des Orfevres (1947) – This dark stunner was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the man behind the classics Wages of Fear and Diabolique. While it’s not quite up to those ultra-lofty standards, Quai des Orfevres is a pretty great flick in its own right. It’s a deeply noir story of a couple who get caught up in a plot to murder a creepy old movie producer. The first half of the flick concerns itself with the backstory and build-up to the event, while the second half becomes kind of a police procedural as it follows a detective in his attempts to track down the killer. The movie kind of loses steam toward the end, but for most of its running time it has a great paranoid feel to it. Its multiple close calls and narrow escapes recall the best work of Cornell Woolrich. Clouzot’s flick has loads of noir style, with deep, looming shadows threatening to swallow up his unlucky characters. Louis Jouvet is fantastic as the detective, exuding a very French sense of ennui and detachment even as he brilliantly works his way to the core of the mystery. There are hints of Peter Falk’s Columbo in his performance, as he comes across as perhaps too gullible and naïve to really get to the bottom of such shady business. Rest assured, he’s as canny as they come. Even darker and grittier than the Stateside noirs of the time, Quai des Orfevres delivers an intriguing story and tons of noir atmosphere.
Sholay (1975) – Wow, this flick is bonkers. Sholay is considered to be the ultimate example of the Bollywood “masala” flick: a movie with a bunch of different genres all smashed together. Sholay is at once a western, a musical, a slapstick comedy, a melodramatic tragedy, and a rom-com, among other things. The tonal shifts can be jarring, as the film will switch from a tense, well-executed train heist sequence to a broadly comic prison break without any transition at all. The meandering plot concerns a pair of likable criminal adventurers who are asked to help a small village defend itself from notorious bandit leader Gabbar Singh and his evil henchmen. There are echoes of Seven Samurai here as the pair try and get the peasants to defend themselves, but the film owes even more to spaghetti westerns, not least in its central storyline of bloody vengeance. Director Ramesh Sippy cribs some scenes directly from Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, most notably an early massacre scene that ends with the exact same smash cut from a fired pistol to a squealing train engine.
There’s never a straight line taken through the plot in Sholay: a scene of Singh brutally murdering some of his own men cuts straight to a wild musical number about Holi, the festival of colors, which is kind of presented as a colorful celebration of sexual harassment. Then, just at the peak of the fun, the bandits ride in and a huge, lengthy gun battle ensues. This flick is absolutely all over the place, but it mostly all works, thanks in large part to its charismatic leads, who are some of the biggest movie stars in cinema history. Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan are perfect as the two lovable crooks, each effortlessly exuding natural star presence. Bachchan went on to become Bollywood’s biggest male star for decades after Sholay, and it’s easy to see why. He has star quality written all over him, but never seems to be trying too hard. Think Harrison Ford at his best and you’re partway there. Other standouts include Hema Malini as Basanti, a talkative village beauty who falls for Dharmendra and at one point is literally called on to dance for his life, and Sanjeev Kumar as the retired policeman whose family’s tragic fate starts the whole plot in motion. This is epic filmmaking of a sort I’ve never experienced before, a wild action movie set on top of layers of heavy melodrama. Sholay is a great introduction to Bollywood excess, bursting at the seams with energy, ambition, and a sheer desire to entertain.
Un Flic (aka Dirty Money) (1972) – The great director Jean-Pierre Melville’s final film, Un Flic is another slow-burning, minimalist winner. ‘Un flic’ is apparently French underworld slang for ‘cop,’ and the cop of the title is played by Melville regular Alain Delon. Delon’s once again spot-on as a brooding police detective who’s on the trail of a robbery gang led by Richard Crenna. The film opens with a fantastic bank robbery scene that sets the stage for what’s to come: the heist is only to provide seed money for an even more daring robbery of a moving train. Delon’s detective is actually friends with Crenna, who he visits at his night club from time to time. Of course, in true French fashion, Delon’s also having a casual affair with Crenna’s mistress (Catherine Deneuve). The flick kind of turns into a moody game of cat and mouse, as Delon edges closer to the center of the conspiracy. While not a masterpiece on the lines of other Melville/Delon collaborations Le Samourai or Le Cercle Rouge, it delivers a bracing dose of early 70s nihilism all the same. Melville’s minimalist approach works well, keeping Delon’s motivations and feelings about what’s going on under pretty tight wraps. It’s all meaningful glances and swirling cigarette smoke, evoking a casual criminal cool that guys like Tarantino and John Woo were still emulating decades later. I wouldn’t recommend Un Flic as the first place to start with Melville’s catalog, but it’s still a superb crime flick with more on its mind than you might think at first glance.
Leave a Reply