John Wick is excellent, one of the best action movies of the past couple of decades. Your mistake was trying to take the plot seriously when really it's just an excuse for the real purpose of the movie i.e. showcasing action sequences. Which are beautiful, kinetic and lost on you.
Yes. Despite all of the ridiculousness, the action sequences are amazing. Instead of choppy cuts, shaky-cam, lots of slow-mo and speedup, lots of CGI, and superhuman action, it has long cuts, steady camera work, normal speed, practical effects, and real people doing mostly real stuff. It's a bizarre combination of over-the-top and down-to-earth, but it works.
Some people watch films and are attuned to technical details like camerawork, lighting, staging, and so forth. They can tell when a film is being innovative, or derivative, or making a homage, or being lazy. I think "John Wick" is best appreciated by people who are like that, but for action sequences.
I've heard that Keanu Reeves's long-time stuntman Chad Stahelski had wanted to do an action movie that was up to his personal standard, and they'd become friends over the years, and when Reeves got the script for "John Wick", he passed it on to Stahelski and they made it together. So in a sense, it's a movie by stunt people for stunt people.
You lose your taste for John Wick style movies when you lose your fantasies about dominating other men. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan still work on aesthetic levels, but without the power fantasies, John Wick becomes ridiculous and tedious.
John Wick is skillfully-made pornography, akin to Taken, except instead of targeting divorced dads it is designed to appeal to anyone who has ever nurtured a petty resentment and dreamed of making their foes quake at the mention of their name. I have nothing against porn and enjoyed both movies, but they make me feel dirty afterwards and, not really being films, are immune to film criticism.
Seriously, that comment helps me better understand what I'm missing. I suppose that on an emotional level it relates to 1970s films like Dirty Harry, and also the Chuck Bronson films?
I thought the first one was quite dull, then went on to watch a smattering of scenes from 2 and 3 on YouTube before watching 4, and actually decently enjoyed 4. I don't know what that says about me.
Could not agree with you more about loving the bits of the movie where "nothing" happens, like the jogging in 2001, the ship waking up in Alien, or Luke watching the sunset in Star Wars.
Also, that Lana del Rey lyric kind of foreshadowed her marriage!
Yes, two more good examples from good movies. Sci-fi really peaked around that period. Blade Runner is another example.
You said: "foreshadowed her marriage!' LOL, I own three of her CDs and didn't even know she was married. My excuse is that I'm 69, too old to follow pop culture trends.
A long standing dream realized: At 9 I saw "The Searchers", a John Wayne/John Ford movie wholly filmed in Monument Valley. First thing; "fell in love with Natalie Wood (16 when she made the movie). Second: Wnated very much to go horseback riding in Mon Valley. Never met Natalie Wood, but in May 2023 went horse back riding in MV!
Great post. The narration in Apocalypse Now is also my favorite part of the picture. Art music: try Bruckner symphonies. You might appreciate them. 7, 8, and 9 are the masterpieces. Vienna or Berlin Phil.
I own the Bruckner 7th, I'll have to give it another listen. To be clear, I get some enjoyment out of classical music, but far less than I would wish. Classical piano is my favorite.
Bruckner might appeal to the parts of you that appreciate a "nothing happens" movie. Bruckner writes simple, beautiful melodies and develops them slowly and minimally. His orchestration technique is not all that interesting (compared to say, Mahler), but it makes a generally beautiful sound. (Bruckner's use of Wagnertuben is an interesting orchestration feature but it still doesn't lead to the more colorful sounds that Mahler generates).
Thanks for the nice opening essay. I got seriously into film when I started college on 1965. Being left leaning politically, I subscribed to The New Republic where I read Stanley Kauffman's movie reviews. He was so much better than Pauline Kael IMO. I have all of his collections of reviews which I still regularly read. He wrote a lot about international cinema which Kael did not.
I think that at some level John Wick must have been conceived as a comedy. But the stuff they were trying to parody was already so campy that it just ended up looking like a more extreme version of a bad action movie.
I agree that it wasn’t funny. I was suggesting that making a parody of action movies that is funny has become an impossible task, because action movies have become so ridiculous that you can’t tell when they are being serious or attempting humor.
My bad, that came across the wrong way--I wasn't intended to contradict you. Good point about parody is becoming almost impossible. Sort of like how The Onion finds it hard to be outrageous when the actual news has become so bizarre.
Very nice piece - the moment you said when nothing was happening I knew instantly what you meant. I went to Caltech in the early 80’s and friends and I used to go to art films every weekend - fond feeling for the Nuart and those yard-long movie lists covering week by week for months.
As for nothing moments, Hitchcock is still for me unsurpassed as “Stranger on a Train”. I just saw Topaz and it wA chockablock full of those strange moments.
Your evocation of Horror films - not classic but one of my favorites is the Italian “Mask of Satan” by Mario Bava, also known as “Black Friday”. The beginning visual sequence with half-naked shining bodybuilder executional triggered me to realize I was gay around age 9. I also watched on a tiny black and white, Saturday day afternoon scary movie channel in the rural south. It’s a beautiful film.
For some reason my visual system is acutely tuned to men dying their hair dark colors (it’s an interesting reason why it’s so obvious). The entire film series “Wick” for me was so comical the instant Keanu Reeves with prematurely coal-black hair appears, it put me in a campy mindset.
I wish there was a version of 2001 without dialogue, except for HAL. All Kubrick films are ravishing.
You may enjoy “The Old Dark House” from 1932 which still to this day I cannot understand why any character does anything. However it is magical as the prototype - almost scene for scene - for Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can’t beat a movie with Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and the strangest person in film ever - Ernest Thesiger.
Very nice piece - the moment you said when nothing was happening I knew instantly what you meant. I went to Caltech in the early 80’s and friends and I used to go to art films every weekend - fond feeling for the Nuart and those yard-long movie lists covering week by week for months.
As for nothing moments, Hitchcock is still for me unsurpassed as “Stranger on a Train”. I just saw Topaz and it wA chockablock full of those strange moments.
Your evocation of Horror films - not classic but one of my favorites is the Italian “Mask of Satan” by Mario Bava, also known as “Black Friday”. The beginning visual sequence with half-naked shining bodybuilder executional triggered me to realize I was gay around age 9, also on a tiny black and white, Saturday day afternoon scary movie channel in the rural south. It’s a beautiful film.
For some reason my visual system is acutely tuned to men dying their hair dark colors (it’s an interesting reason why it’s so obvious). The entire film for me was so comical the instant Keanu Reeves with prematurely coal-black hair appears, it put me in a campy mindset.
I wish there was a version of 2001 without dialogue, except for HAL. All Kubrick films are ravishing.
You may enjoy “The Old Dark House” from 1932 which still to this day I cannot understand why any character does anything. However it is magical as the prototype - almost scene for scene - for Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can’t beat a movie with Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and the strangest person in film ever - Ernest Thesiger.
Very thoughtful comments---thanks. When I was young, I completely missed the gay subtext in many films, Rocky Horror included. Those were different times. I'm curious as to how much overlap there is between the sort of male actor that heterosexual men envy, and those that gays appreciate. I'm especially thinking of the very handsome actors like Alain Delon in Purple Noon, or Leslie Cheung in those Wong Kar Wai films.
Hitchcock used to be my favorite director, now it's probably Kubrick. It's amusing how the actors in 2001 are machine-like and unemotional, and Hal displays human emotions such as paranoia and fear. There are art film directors (Tarkovsky) and popular entertainment directors (Spielberg), but Kubrick is the best example of both in one person. He was also a meticulous craftsman, as you suggest.
Saw Old Dark House years ago--lots of fond memories of those early horror films.
Speaking of jet black dyed hair, I wonder if having Kyle MacLachlan play three roles in Twin Peaks: The Return was inspired by Kubrick having Peter Sellers play three roles in Dr. Strangelove.
I think there is a spirit of recycling wooden objects when it comes to Kyle McLachlan in film roles. Three at once - I suspect it’s good for the environment. We have to do our part for global warming to watch him I suppose.
Delon has the pout - Presley, Dean and others too a which make them very attractive to someone. Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson were the distilled versions. I preferred his wife Romy Schneider who looks like a character out of John Waters’s Baltimore. She’d bite your face off like a raging chimpanzee look, before a walk -on in “Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill” as Tura Santana’s mentor.
Spielberg has all the artistry of a pinball machine. There are very pretty pinball machines and they were good to put money in but the story was hard to remember after a while.
I like films that make completely artificial worlds that are totally alien but plausible. Vincente Minelli does it well, Fritz Lang, Kurosawa.
Some directors are a yawn. Orson Wells.
Then there are ones every time I watch their films they change. Polanski one of those.
Our criteria back in the 80’s was could you turn the soundtrack off and love the film.
If you appreciate silent comedies I highly recommend recent indie film Hundreds of Beavers. It has such reverence for clowning and slapstick and constructs its jokes masterfully.
»For the first time in my life, I saw classic black and white films as they were meant to be seen, on the big screen. The images were stunning. I became a snob that refused to watch films on TV.« – That's pretty much what I've experienced in the mid 70s when I watched "Zorba the Greek" for the first time.
Do you have somewhere where all your ratings are collated in one place Scott? Surely I don't have to trawl through decades of blog posts for your reviews of various movies
Love to see praise for late Obayashi. The third in the “anti-war trilogy,” Hanagatami, is really spectacular, it’s on Criterion Channel till the end of the month.
Hi Scott, have you ever written about (a) where/how you see all of these movies, and (b) how you find out about them? If you have a process you can write about (or maybe have already written about) and can share it, that would be appreciated. Thanks!
Not yet, Hard to believe such a small screen would be as good as my 77 inch OLED, but perhaps I'll try it sometime. In general, I'm a late adopter of technology. With music, I'm still 100% CDs; I haven't even figured out how to use Spotify.
Don't reason from a screen size, it's about how how much of your vision the screen takes up, it's apparent distance from you, and the pixels per degree of resolution. If it was comfortable to wear it would be visually the best way to watch any film.
likewise! I liked the Vision Pro because it was the best way of replicating that feeling at home, and for older movies that don’t get shown in the cinema much/at all. Particularly great for flights. (Was too expensive and heavy though, I returned it).
John Wick is excellent, one of the best action movies of the past couple of decades. Your mistake was trying to take the plot seriously when really it's just an excuse for the real purpose of the movie i.e. showcasing action sequences. Which are beautiful, kinetic and lost on you.
"lost on you"
Yes, I agree.
Yes. Despite all of the ridiculousness, the action sequences are amazing. Instead of choppy cuts, shaky-cam, lots of slow-mo and speedup, lots of CGI, and superhuman action, it has long cuts, steady camera work, normal speed, practical effects, and real people doing mostly real stuff. It's a bizarre combination of over-the-top and down-to-earth, but it works.
Some people watch films and are attuned to technical details like camerawork, lighting, staging, and so forth. They can tell when a film is being innovative, or derivative, or making a homage, or being lazy. I think "John Wick" is best appreciated by people who are like that, but for action sequences.
I've heard that Keanu Reeves's long-time stuntman Chad Stahelski had wanted to do an action movie that was up to his personal standard, and they'd become friends over the years, and when Reeves got the script for "John Wick", he passed it on to Stahelski and they made it together. So in a sense, it's a movie by stunt people for stunt people.
You lose your taste for John Wick style movies when you lose your fantasies about dominating other men. Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan still work on aesthetic levels, but without the power fantasies, John Wick becomes ridiculous and tedious.
John Wick is skillfully-made pornography, akin to Taken, except instead of targeting divorced dads it is designed to appeal to anyone who has ever nurtured a petty resentment and dreamed of making their foes quake at the mention of their name. I have nothing against porn and enjoyed both movies, but they make me feel dirty afterwards and, not really being films, are immune to film criticism.
If I get divorced, I'll take another look. :)
Seriously, that comment helps me better understand what I'm missing. I suppose that on an emotional level it relates to 1970s films like Dirty Harry, and also the Chuck Bronson films?
I thought the first one was quite dull, then went on to watch a smattering of scenes from 2 and 3 on YouTube before watching 4, and actually decently enjoyed 4. I don't know what that says about me.
Could not agree with you more about loving the bits of the movie where "nothing" happens, like the jogging in 2001, the ship waking up in Alien, or Luke watching the sunset in Star Wars.
Also, that Lana del Rey lyric kind of foreshadowed her marriage!
Yes, two more good examples from good movies. Sci-fi really peaked around that period. Blade Runner is another example.
You said: "foreshadowed her marriage!' LOL, I own three of her CDs and didn't even know she was married. My excuse is that I'm 69, too old to follow pop culture trends.
A long standing dream realized: At 9 I saw "The Searchers", a John Wayne/John Ford movie wholly filmed in Monument Valley. First thing; "fell in love with Natalie Wood (16 when she made the movie). Second: Wnated very much to go horseback riding in Mon Valley. Never met Natalie Wood, but in May 2023 went horse back riding in MV!
In May 2024, I drove my car in Monument Valley. Yes, a horse would be better.
Great post. The narration in Apocalypse Now is also my favorite part of the picture. Art music: try Bruckner symphonies. You might appreciate them. 7, 8, and 9 are the masterpieces. Vienna or Berlin Phil.
I own the Bruckner 7th, I'll have to give it another listen. To be clear, I get some enjoyment out of classical music, but far less than I would wish. Classical piano is my favorite.
Bruckner might appeal to the parts of you that appreciate a "nothing happens" movie. Bruckner writes simple, beautiful melodies and develops them slowly and minimally. His orchestration technique is not all that interesting (compared to say, Mahler), but it makes a generally beautiful sound. (Bruckner's use of Wagnertuben is an interesting orchestration feature but it still doesn't lead to the more colorful sounds that Mahler generates).
Thanks. For piano music I like the more minimalist sections, such as occur in some of Keith Jarrett's 1970s concerts, or the late Beethoven sonatas.
Then you might also like Vladyslav Sendecki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CsvY5kV1lQ&list=OLAK5uy_kApVpmKln0Ks8u0WTZ9lA00DKfAd8k6Es&index=6
Thanks, I enjoyed that.
Thanks for the nice opening essay. I got seriously into film when I started college on 1965. Being left leaning politically, I subscribed to The New Republic where I read Stanley Kauffman's movie reviews. He was so much better than Pauline Kael IMO. I have all of his collections of reviews which I still regularly read. He wrote a lot about international cinema which Kael did not.
I think that at some level John Wick must have been conceived as a comedy. But the stuff they were trying to parody was already so campy that it just ended up looking like a more extreme version of a bad action movie.
Perhaps it was intended as a comedy, but they forgot to make it funny.
I agree that it wasn’t funny. I was suggesting that making a parody of action movies that is funny has become an impossible task, because action movies have become so ridiculous that you can’t tell when they are being serious or attempting humor.
My bad, that came across the wrong way--I wasn't intended to contradict you. Good point about parody is becoming almost impossible. Sort of like how The Onion finds it hard to be outrageous when the actual news has become so bizarre.
Very nice piece - the moment you said when nothing was happening I knew instantly what you meant. I went to Caltech in the early 80’s and friends and I used to go to art films every weekend - fond feeling for the Nuart and those yard-long movie lists covering week by week for months.
As for nothing moments, Hitchcock is still for me unsurpassed as “Stranger on a Train”. I just saw Topaz and it wA chockablock full of those strange moments.
Your evocation of Horror films - not classic but one of my favorites is the Italian “Mask of Satan” by Mario Bava, also known as “Black Friday”. The beginning visual sequence with half-naked shining bodybuilder executional triggered me to realize I was gay around age 9. I also watched on a tiny black and white, Saturday day afternoon scary movie channel in the rural south. It’s a beautiful film.
For some reason my visual system is acutely tuned to men dying their hair dark colors (it’s an interesting reason why it’s so obvious). The entire film series “Wick” for me was so comical the instant Keanu Reeves with prematurely coal-black hair appears, it put me in a campy mindset.
I wish there was a version of 2001 without dialogue, except for HAL. All Kubrick films are ravishing.
You may enjoy “The Old Dark House” from 1932 which still to this day I cannot understand why any character does anything. However it is magical as the prototype - almost scene for scene - for Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can’t beat a movie with Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and the strangest person in film ever - Ernest Thesiger.
Very nice piece - the moment you said when nothing was happening I knew instantly what you meant. I went to Caltech in the early 80’s and friends and I used to go to art films every weekend - fond feeling for the Nuart and those yard-long movie lists covering week by week for months.
As for nothing moments, Hitchcock is still for me unsurpassed as “Stranger on a Train”. I just saw Topaz and it wA chockablock full of those strange moments.
Your evocation of Horror films - not classic but one of my favorites is the Italian “Mask of Satan” by Mario Bava, also known as “Black Friday”. The beginning visual sequence with half-naked shining bodybuilder executional triggered me to realize I was gay around age 9, also on a tiny black and white, Saturday day afternoon scary movie channel in the rural south. It’s a beautiful film.
For some reason my visual system is acutely tuned to men dying their hair dark colors (it’s an interesting reason why it’s so obvious). The entire film for me was so comical the instant Keanu Reeves with prematurely coal-black hair appears, it put me in a campy mindset.
I wish there was a version of 2001 without dialogue, except for HAL. All Kubrick films are ravishing.
You may enjoy “The Old Dark House” from 1932 which still to this day I cannot understand why any character does anything. However it is magical as the prototype - almost scene for scene - for Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can’t beat a movie with Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and the strangest person in film ever - Ernest Thesiger.
Very thoughtful comments---thanks. When I was young, I completely missed the gay subtext in many films, Rocky Horror included. Those were different times. I'm curious as to how much overlap there is between the sort of male actor that heterosexual men envy, and those that gays appreciate. I'm especially thinking of the very handsome actors like Alain Delon in Purple Noon, or Leslie Cheung in those Wong Kar Wai films.
Hitchcock used to be my favorite director, now it's probably Kubrick. It's amusing how the actors in 2001 are machine-like and unemotional, and Hal displays human emotions such as paranoia and fear. There are art film directors (Tarkovsky) and popular entertainment directors (Spielberg), but Kubrick is the best example of both in one person. He was also a meticulous craftsman, as you suggest.
Saw Old Dark House years ago--lots of fond memories of those early horror films.
Speaking of jet black dyed hair, I wonder if having Kyle MacLachlan play three roles in Twin Peaks: The Return was inspired by Kubrick having Peter Sellers play three roles in Dr. Strangelove.
In the case of Rocky Horror, I think it's text rather than subtext.
I think there is a spirit of recycling wooden objects when it comes to Kyle McLachlan in film roles. Three at once - I suspect it’s good for the environment. We have to do our part for global warming to watch him I suppose.
Delon has the pout - Presley, Dean and others too a which make them very attractive to someone. Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson were the distilled versions. I preferred his wife Romy Schneider who looks like a character out of John Waters’s Baltimore. She’d bite your face off like a raging chimpanzee look, before a walk -on in “Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill” as Tura Santana’s mentor.
Spielberg has all the artistry of a pinball machine. There are very pretty pinball machines and they were good to put money in but the story was hard to remember after a while.
I like films that make completely artificial worlds that are totally alien but plausible. Vincente Minelli does it well, Fritz Lang, Kurosawa.
Some directors are a yawn. Orson Wells.
Then there are ones every time I watch their films they change. Polanski one of those.
Our criteria back in the 80’s was could you turn the soundtrack off and love the film.
If you appreciate silent comedies I highly recommend recent indie film Hundreds of Beavers. It has such reverence for clowning and slapstick and constructs its jokes masterfully.
Thanks for the tip.
Seconded. The best film I've seen this year.
A few suggestions if you haven't seen:
1. Uncut Gems
2. Challengers
3. Bound
4. Lovers Rock
5. Incendies
Haven't seen Lover's Rock. Liked all the others except Challengers, which I did not like.
I'm surprised about challengers, but I think you'd appreciate lovers rock.
I'll look for it.
Unfortunately it may only be available on prime video or criterion Blu-ray
»For the first time in my life, I saw classic black and white films as they were meant to be seen, on the big screen. The images were stunning. I became a snob that refused to watch films on TV.« – That's pretty much what I've experienced in the mid 70s when I watched "Zorba the Greek" for the first time.
Thanks for the good read, by the way!
How far away do you sit from your 77" OLED TV? Do you have the sound on loud or medium? And the room is dark, I presume?
Thanks for writing up the movies and your background. I will update my model accordingly.
Around 10 to 12 feet, in a dark room with medium sound.
Do you have somewhere where all your ratings are collated in one place Scott? Surely I don't have to trawl through decades of blog posts for your reviews of various movies
Someone once put one together. When I'm less busy I'll try to do so.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19tlpnivSnaQTsVC-lU8bzcCdcXdpm02MX889gXwYdn8/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Thanks, that's very helpful. It's odd seeing certain films multiple times, with different ratings. Did the films change, or did I?
Love to see praise for late Obayashi. The third in the “anti-war trilogy,” Hanagatami, is really spectacular, it’s on Criterion Channel till the end of the month.
Yes, that's an excellent film.
Hi Scott, have you ever written about (a) where/how you see all of these movies, and (b) how you find out about them? If you have a process you can write about (or maybe have already written about) and can share it, that would be appreciated. Thanks!
Until the past few years, almost all were at the theatre. Now most are Criterion Channel (labeled CC), or Mubi, or Amazon Prime.
Orange County doesn't have many good theaters.
have you tried watching a movie on an apple vision pro? you can get one and return it after a month would be very curious for your take!
Not yet, Hard to believe such a small screen would be as good as my 77 inch OLED, but perhaps I'll try it sometime. In general, I'm a late adopter of technology. With music, I'm still 100% CDs; I haven't even figured out how to use Spotify.
Don't reason from a screen size, it's about how how much of your vision the screen takes up, it's apparent distance from you, and the pixels per degree of resolution. If it was comfortable to wear it would be visually the best way to watch any film.
It doesn't feel like a small screen FWIW — feels akin to being in a large cinema by yourself.
Thanks. BTW, when I see films at the theatre I often am almost by myself. I go weekday afternoons.
likewise! I liked the Vision Pro because it was the best way of replicating that feeling at home, and for older movies that don’t get shown in the cinema much/at all. Particularly great for flights. (Was too expensive and heavy though, I returned it).