Top Ten Killer Directors.

TOP TEN KILLER DIRECTORS

Anyone who reads through my movie ramblings is going to notice there are certain directors who I compare just about everything to. Names that pop up, movies, styles...so I figured it was about time I lay out some of my ground work. And so, I give you the badasses behind the badass movies; my top ten killer directors:

10. Steven Spielberg.

"I dream for a living." 

Why we love him: his extensive imagination, his timeless characters, his elaborate worlds.

Classics: Indiana Jones (1981-89), Jussassic Park (1993), Schindler's List (1993).

9. Christopher Nolan. 

"I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today's movies. They believe everything they're hearing and seeing. I like to shake that up."

Why we love him: his mindfucks. 

Classics: Memento (2000), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010).

8. Francis Ford Coppola. 

"My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam."

Why we love him: his epics, his movies we can't refuse.  

Classics: The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979).

7. The Wachowski Brothers. 

"One of the things we had talked about...was an idea that I believe philosophy and religion and mathematics all try to answer. Which is a reconciling between a natural world and another world that is perceived by our intellect."

Why we love them: the way they have us leaving the theater wondering what the fuck just happened. 

Classics: Bound (1996), The Matrix (1999).

6. Martin Scorsese.

"Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out."

Why we love him: his command of suspense, the powerful way he wields silence.

Classics: Taxi Driver (1976), Goodfellas (1990), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010).

5. The Coen Brothers.

"He does most of the typing." "Yeah, I usually type, because I type better. It's incredibly informal. I mean, us writing is basically just us sitting around in a room, moping for hours." 

Why we love them: their black humor, their lovable characters, their absurd sense of reality.

Classics: Blood Simple (1984), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998). 

4. Stanley Kubrick.

"A film is--or should be--more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings."

Why we love him: his twisted imagination, his ability to make us cringe at humanity.

Classics: Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964), 2001: Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Eggiwegs! I Would Like...To Smash Them!

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

Got Moloko?

So this is a bit of a throwback, but after last weekend's midnight showing, once again A Clockwork Orange has proven that it will never get old. We take a romp into the life of Alex DeLarge, a teenage boy trapped in a futuristic world overrun with an excess of violence, rape, and just general nastiness. Alex, the ringleader of one of these "meddling kids", is put through a "rehabilitation" program with the hopes of instilling a sense of compassion for the human race and "goodness" into the boy. Thus introduces the question: is is better to be human and chose to be evil, or to be stripped of the choice and forced to do only good? Although this movie has all the stamps of a Stanley Kubrick 70s movie--the slow pace, the extended scenes in which very little happens--the aesthetic richness in every scene makes it worth the wait. Indeed, even when Alex is simply going through the motions of stripping down in order to give over his belongings to the police, the atmosphere and the world Kubrick creates is intense (the shouting police officer, the threat of the white line, the slow realization that Alex doesn't carry baby heads in his pockets, he is in fact just like you and me).

To anyone who's read the book, this is definitely one of the best book to movie adaptations I've ever scene (even forgiving the changes made in the "death of the cat lady" scene. If someone gives you a giant fake penis sculpture, you really have no choice but to bash someone's face in). Kubrick captures the world, the essence of Burgess' novel, in the tongue-tripping narration and quirky, twisted details (mothers with Tonks-style changing hair, statues with nipples that bleed milk, and counselors who are a little too...touchy).

Actor abuse?

This movie is definitely not for the squeamish. Kubrick makes no apologies about the violence and delivers one of the most disturbing rapes scenes ("Singing In The Rain" will never be the same again). He forces the viewer to stay with the scene, prolonging it, making us endure what recent directors would have just left to the imagination with snappy cut outs and dramatic flashes. While no cats may have not been harmed in the making of this film, I have to occasionally wonder about the actors. And I'm not just talking about the repetitive epileptic fits Mr. Alexander seems to suffer. Malcolm McDowell takes some serious hits for this movie, for which he should earn some sort of endurance prize. The iconic scene in which his eyeslids are pried open and held there as someone administers eye drops was all done with extraordinary patience, not CGI. Plus, I'm sure this is just me, but every time during the scene in which Dim and Georgie more or less water board Alex, I LOOK for that little blink of a white cigarette burn in the top right corner (thanks a lot, Fight Club. I will never be able to ignore that little flashing circle again) and every time I don't see it. All evidence points to one shot. Which seems impossible. I've tried holding my breath that long, I have. But it just seems like actor abuse. Then again, if I was an actor, I'd hold my breath as long as it'd take for Kubrick. I'd swallow too.

Violence, sex, crazy futuristic 70s shit. What more could you want? Well, the closet intellectual in me wets herself a little with the academic debate underneath the top layer of cinema goodness--the same debate which tormented Dostoevsky and yet somehow is still beautifully articulated by Kubrick. "Goodness is something to be chosen," claims the Prison Chaplain, "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." Kubrick keeps the integrity of Anthony Burgess' novel by exposing Alex in all his truly horrific glory, and then getting the audience to cheer for him and pray that he never stops being the evil little shit he is. Viddy this horrowshow flick pronto, yeah?

ALERT: DOUBLE FEATURE OF EPICNESS.

Attention, brothers! If you happen to be in the New York area, check out the IFC Center this weekend on 6th Ave and West 3rd St where there will be two MIDNIGHT SHOWINGS of A Clockwork Orange and Pulp Fiction on Friday and Saturday night.

Be there or be square. Viddy well.