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My rankings are based on my preferences which are assumed to be rational. Lists are ranked in descending order.
Just because one work is rated higher than another does not mean I prefer it to the other.
Ratings do not start at a 10, just because I have no complaints about a given work and believe that it is flawless does not indicate I would give it a rating of 10.
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Mimi wo sumaseba (1995)
Ghibli's underrated masterpiece
"Whisper of the Heart" opens with the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads" as we watch anything but it. City landscapes are shown as we are introduced to the 14-year-old main character Shizuku who keeps on re-writing the song's lyrics although never to her liking.
Like any great writer, Shizuku reads voraciously, telling her teacher of her plan to read 20 books over the summer. But for every book she takes out of the library, a boy by the name of Seiji Amasawa gets there before her. Later, we learn that the boy who teases her corny lyrics that she despises, and the reader Seiji she dreams about, are one and the same.
Seiji longs to be a violin maker, but he never seems to be content with his craft, always feeling short of perfect even as Shizuku is awed by his work. Similarly, Shizuku complains of the imperfections of her lyrics even as her friends gasp at their greatness. As artists, they suffer a disconnect between reality and their harshest critic, that being themselves.
Shizuku believes she isn't enough for Seiji, who is headed for Italy to pursue his dreams. During his leave, she decides to pursue her passion and begins to write a novel in the span of two months, promising Seiji's grandfather Nishi that he'll be the first one to read it.
Shizuku's passion for art comes to the detriment of a traditional life. Her teacher reminds her to study for high school entrance exams while she grabs a book, her sister asks her to do the chores while she slams the door, her parents plead her to focus on school while she ignores them.
Her father has a talk with her about her failing grades, wondering what she is doing instead of schoolwork. Unwilling to tell him about her book, she stresses the importance of her project, and to her surprise, her father allows her to do as she wishes, but warns her that the untraditional path is a hard one.
She has a dream about trying to find something, only for it revealed to be a dead bird, perhaps a symbol of the possible dead end writing offers. We don't know if they will ever fully succeed, but when Shizuku finishes her novel and when Seiji is offered an apprenticeship after high school, you can't help but cheer them on.
The film captures the struggle of being an artist in a way that no film ever comes close to. Its director, Yoshifumi Kondo (in his one and only directorial outing) took his toll as an artist and paid the price for it, tragically passing away in 1998 at the age of 47 after wrapping things up on "Princess Mononoke" possibly due to overwork.
Nobody in the film ever faces such a loss, but heartbreak and tragedy are adressed. Nishi gets separated from his young lover at an early age because of the war. Unable to meet his dearest love, he still gets to reminsce about her and experience her in Shizuku's story.
The work, unlike other Studio Ghibli outings, is not one of fantasy, but when we get to experience a bit of Shizuku's imagination, we feel nothing but wonder and joy.
"Whisper of the Heart" captures the hardships of being an artist and the blossomings of young love. It shows what could have been and what was in the presence of Ghibli's dazzling animation. It tells the story of a girl who falls in a love with a boy who falls in love in return.
It is a masterpiece about creating, re-creating, and transforming art into something truly yours.
As I write this review, I am reminded of Shizuku re-writing "Take Me Home, Country Roads" again and again never quite to her satisfaction. I am reminded of the starving artist who is not sure if their work is good enough.
Shizuku and Seiji might not believe in themselves, but they sure do believe in each other. Shizuku and Seiji might not always get what they want, but they will always have themselves. Shizuku and Seiji might not think their work is good enough, but "Whisper of the Heart" sure is.
Taxi Driver (1976)
"you're only as healthy as you feel."
Taxi Driver opens with images of a taxi and a city. Neon lights flash across the screen and there is nothing terrifying there, yet it is shot like a horror film. We are not introduced to the film's protagonist, but the movie's atmosphere is set.
We know Travis Bickle is 26 years old, a former Vietnam marine, a veteran with an honorable discharge, a taxi driver, and an insomniac, yet he remains a mystery. Did the war change the man or merely attract him? Such questions are never completely answered.
But Travis Bickle remains one of the most endearing antiheroes to hit the silver screen. He meanders New York City from night til its wake, observing what he calls filth and trash. We watch Travis attempt to court a young woman with some success. Later he brings her to a porn theater...
After such a failed attempt, in what may be the most interesting shot of the picture, we see Travis try to get her back over the phone, but the camera slides away, almost as if the audience cannot bear the cringe. The shot shows us our view of Travis, played perfectly by the young Bob DeNiro, someone we empathize with, but cannot stand to watch.
We see the world through his perspective, there is never a seen without him lurking there. We see the subtext of how he views African-Americans, and further the city he lives in. We see how he attempts to connect to others and ultimately disgusts them. We see an ending that may be his delusion, society's delusion, or everyone's delusion.
We see Travis through Michael Chapma's splendid cinematography, with the mesmerizing score in the background, through Paul Schrader's writing, handled perfectly by Martin Scorsese. The film always glides over from Travis's viewpoint, if he sees trash, we follow, if he sees the most beautiful woman in the city, we see her too, and if he believes he's the hero, we see his belief in action.
The film reminds us of John Ford's and John Wayne's classic westerns such as The Searchers, indeed Travis not only gets called "cowboy" throughout the film, even displaying his own holster, he even imitates Wayne in one of the film's most iconic scenes.
Travis finds a 12-year-old child prostitute, played by the teenage Jodie Foster, but instead of calling the police, he takes justice into his own hands. The ending of Taxi Driver is one to behold. Always from his perspective, we don't know what to believe. He's lauded as a hero and continues his life as before.
Whether the ending of the film is true or not doesn't interest me as much as one of its final moments. Bickle looks into his own reflection a couple of times, turns the mirror back into his own eyes, and puts it back into place, he continues driving. It reminds me of one of the film's famous lines "You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here." For Travis, I think the second part holds true.
Kimi no na wa. (2016)
A Flawed Masterpiece
We are given a sense of longing. A sense of being connected through the red string of fate. A sense of loving a place you have never been in nor have ever heard of. Your Name. (2016), known in Japan as Kimi no Na wa., follows two high-schoolers: Taki Tachibana and Mitsuha Miyamizu who suddenly begin to intermittently swap bodies, despite having never met.
Being Makoto Shinkai's 5th feature film: Kimi no No wa. Boasts an impressive display of artistry. The backgrounds are drawn with magnificent awe and wonder; we see shots where the camera glides through locations that must have taken a toll on the animators. Shinkai, who is known for creating beautiful landscapes, backdrops, and stunning pieces of background animation, does not fail to deliver here. There exists a particularly impressive animation sequence midway through the film that can best be described by seeing it with your own eyes.
But the film's breathtaking visuals only serve to enhance the story. In the first act, we are introduced to the main characters slowly discovering the film's premise, and by the 30-minute mark, they finally seem to get what's going on. They learn to communicate with each other through paper and digital notes, figuring out how to navigate this new conundrum life has brought them. They maintain rules and help each other navigate their social lives. Until the body-swapping stops...
Kimi no Na wa. Delivers a major plot twist in the second act of the film, and the final act gives the characters a conflict to resolve, and a denouement that Shinkai seems all too familiar with.
The work is essentially a culmination of what Shinkai's career has built up to. Star-crossed lovers whose fate is torn by an exogenous fantasy event that they must overcome are present here. It delivers a fantasy romance with dazzling animation and editing to deliver a dream-like quality. And with it comes all of the problems of Shinkai's work.
Without needing to summarize the film's plot, Kimi no Na wa. Delivers a story that seems like a first or second draft. The characters seem little more than stereotypes and relationships never get explored. We get introduced to both leads' respective fathers but never get a payoff. Worldbuilding seems to be ignored, plot holes never get explained, and certain events seem all too coincidental for my liking.
The plot brings an interesting structure and with it pacing. The first act introduces all the characters and delivers comedic situations that they're present. Once the second act rolls the film gets quite repetitive; Taki and Mitsuha continue on in their lives in a way that lacks a certain depth. Mitsuha, being a girl from the country, has a lot to learn with her first step in Tokyo, and her role as the mayor's daughter gets set up although never gets fully explored. Sadly, Taki, who has no interesting dynamics with the people surrounding him, gets thrown into the main twist of the film.
The film's twist is interesting albeit never developed to its full potential. How do they notice the disparity in dates? The movie never explains such mysteries. It's not interested in such things, and that leads to the meteorite disaster of its third act. Shinkai attempts to collide multiple genres altogether in a way that never fleshes out very well. There is few distressing conflict here, the audience can predict what will happen, and whatever conflict exists is contrived through happenstance. It delivers such a messy screenplay through melodrama that you'd think would only work on pre-teens.
Yet it delivers. Yet the film brought me to tears. Multiple edits and multiple shots gave me a feeling of eudaimonia that no other anime has let me ever experience again. Taki and Mitsuha may never reach the character depth other anime protagonists have, but they act as vessels to connect the theme and deliver the film's story. The film may never explain why they never noticed the calendar or forgot each other's names at those exact moments. But it works on a visceral level.
The film connects our heroes through the red thread of fate, a Japanese belief in what is destined to be true love. Ending five years after Taki set forth to find her, now he's a university graduate on a job hunt. Taki and Mitsuha, having forgotten all their memories, but never forgetting that feeling that they gave each other, glimpse each other when their respective trains pass each other and are instantly drawn to seek one another. Disembarking and racing to find the other, finally meeting at the stairs of Suga Shrine. He calls out to her, saying he feels he knows her, and she responds likewise. Having finally found what each had long searched for, they shed tears of happiness and simultaneously ask each other for their name.
Kimi no Na wa. Is one of Shinkai's greatest films. Kimi no Na wa. Is also a mess yet handled with dazzling direction and animation. Kimi no Na wa. Offers writing that connects to the heart but forgets what is needed to engage us on the head level. Kimi no Na wa. Is a car crash of a movie that somehow parks in the right place. Kimi no Na wa. Does not deliver something deep to your life, it does not deliver a great script, it does not deliver masterful pacing, it does not deliver characters you will connect to, but it does deliver Kimi no Na wa. And for a Shinkai film, that is more than enough.
The Social Network (2010)
Hand covers bruise....
What does it mean to be a friend? Do you have to be one on Facebook? Do you have to be connected to them or are they a means to an end? There are many questions that plague director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin's 2010 film 'The Social Network'.
We follow a young Mark Zuckerberg from his roots at Harvard all the way up to his falling out with Eduardo Saverin and the lawsuits from the Winklevoss twins.
Mark is a fast-talking genius entrepreneur, but does he (in the film) have any real friends? We first meet him at a bar with his then-girlfriend Erica Albright. Unlike other directors, Fincher keeps the lighting dark, shooting the opening in a black and yellow color palette with a lockdown tripod. Fincher is known for mostly using stationary shots, smooth dollies, and tracking shots. The camera is rarely unmotivated in his body of work always perfectly tracking movements with handheld and shaky cam shots few and far between. Just like our protagonist, Fincher is cold, precise, and mechanical like clockwork. Known for 'Se7en', 'Zodiac', and 'Fight Club', he places the audience in a cold place in 'The Social Network'.
The film contains a fantastic use of editing and cinematic language, with its first scene being masterfully crafted. It starts out in wide shots with Erica and Mark facing each other. Then, the shots get tighter and tighter as we get to know the characters more intimately. As we move forward, the scene begins to use telephoto over-the-shoulder shots. Eventually, as Erica declares she is breaking up with him, we see them individually in clean singles, thus separating the two characters. Not to mention, the scene contains a masterful use of Sorkin's dialogue, wonderfully handled by the actors. The lines are quick, snappy, and full of misunderstandings. Erica tries to keep up with Mark but is no match for his intellect. She is confused by his train of thought frequently talking about different topics than he mentions. Jesse Eisenberg, who plays the young billionaire, is perfectly cast as the neurotic genius. He carries himself above others and is too fast and clumsy for the audience to ever completely grasp.
The editing of the film is pristine. Its use of intercutting, flashbacks, and flashforwards of the deposition indicates mastery of the craft. We clearly highlight Zuckerberg's mistakes in the legal battle. In addition, the hacking scene is unstoppable. Combined with the beautiful score and the constant cutting between different close-ups, the movie makes hacking look as cool and exciting as ever. We see Zuckerberg's clear drunken focus between his eyes, the keyboard, and the monitor. We intercut between the infiltration of the club and Zuckerberg's infiltration of the website.
The plot deals with Zuckerberg's betrayal of Eduardo, who was the CFO, co-founder, and seed funder of the company. Mark sees him as a tool, a means to enlarge Facebook to the giant it is over 12 years after the film first hit the big screen. Zuckerberg dilutes Eduardo's share of the company from 34.4% all the way down to a measly 0.03%, without diluting the other shareholders. He removes him as Facebook CFO and removes him as a friend.
The film deals with Mark at its center. He rarely changes in the film, unlike his best friend Eduardo who grows more aware and competent by the end of the picture. Mark betrays his friend to go into a world he wants, not what he needs.
One other character of importance is Sean Parker. Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) acts as Eduardo's replacement of sorts for Mark. He was everything that was hip and cool and calm bringing his previous success to Facebook and introducing it to Silicon Valley. He puts on a facade luring Mark into a wild life as Facebook. Eduardo sees through him but Zuckerberg doesn't.
The film remains prestigious in its craft. Calculated and methodical in Fincher's direction; witty and thematic in Sorkin's screenwriting. It has fantastic editing with a more fantastic score composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross with the theme 'Hand Covers Bruise' being a standout.
The performances are excellent. Eisenberg embodies all the traits of the driven yet robotic protagonist, giving a career-best performance. He, however, does not discredit the rest of the cast. Timberlake as Parker is good at being a jerk, for most would punch him in the face at first sight. Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin easily makes him the most empathetic character. He feels betrayed by Mark, for Mark ruined their friendship. And that is what it's all about, a ruined friendship. He created Facebook at the expense of his friends.
The last scene is in direct contrast to the first. Where we were in a dark, tight, and crowded bar with minimal lighting, we are now in a bright office holding plenty of space. Mark is framed the same way, but now he remains alone. He has already become the world's youngest billionaire with Facebook holding over half a billion users. He checks his laptop to see if Erica is on Facebook. She, who previously made fun of the platform as a simple game, is now on it. He sends her a friend request and refreshes the page again and again and again. The Beatles' song 'Baby You're a Rich Man' plays, cut.
In the last scene, we see Mark desperately trying to repair an old relationship. He wants to not just be financially wealthy, but emotionally as well. We don't know if he will succeed, but he tries anyway. As said before, 'The Social Network' is about a ruined friendship. He lost Eduardo. He lost his only true friend. He gave up his only friend for 500 million fake ones.
Stalker (1979)
Faith in a Hopeless World
What purpose does faith serve? That is one of the many questions asked in Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 sci-fi film 'Stalker'. The film follows an unnamed protagonist who works as and is called a "stalker". Stalkers act as illegal smugglers to bring their clients to "the Zone" and to "the Room" where their deepest and innermost desires are fulfilled. Our protagonist brings in a writer and professor each referred to by their job titles.
The film acts without much context to its characters. Stalker has a wife who begs him to quit working and instead focus on taking care of their deformed child yet he persists. We are never revealed his motivations to keep working in harsh conditions for -seeming low compensation nor why he doesn't simply use the room himself. The film's plot is undoubtedly straightforward, yet the runtime clocks in at an astounding 161 minutes. Tarkovsky knows this, with the first shot being a medium wide containing no dialogue or action and lasting over 3 minutes. Indeed he is quoted to having said "The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theater have time to leave before the main action starts."
The film is filled with long takes, close-ups, forward dollies, and slow-moving shots. Tarkovsky reminds us his previous work 'Mirror', a slower and better film full of flashbacks, dream sequences, flash forwards, montages and incredible long takes. Andrei, whose father Arseny Tarkovsky was a famous Russian poet, is known as a master of poetic cinema. Take for example his "floating scene" in 'Solaris' and the last sequences in 'Ivan's Childhood' and 'Andrei Rublev'. 'Stalker' is no exception.
The film has a marvelous editing prowess holding and lingering longer than is expected. It contains multiple dream-like sequences with top-down tracking shots, dollies, and profile shots. It uses a slow filmmaking language preferring to have the camera on a dolly or tripod never using gimbals, steadicams, or showing a singled hand-held shot. The cinematography on screen is beautifully shot by Alexander Knyazhinsky. The picture shows dark shadows with harsh lighting. He symbolically shoots the first act, where martial law, abandoned buildings, and poverty are rampant, in a sepia monochromatic tone. The second act, set in the Zone, goes to sudden shift to color, similar to that done in 'The Wizard of Oz', reflecting our protagonists' mental perceptions.
What is seen inside the frame, is wonderful production design. We watch bleak building, winding roads, and the chaotic "Zone" full of grass, water, and what appears to be a nuclear power plant. The Zone reminds us of our habitat and its further corruption.
Yet, Stalker is more than a mere technical showoff. It tackles faith at its core with plenty of Christian symbols hidden in the film, e.g. The crosses born in the Zone. It can be as an allegory on a missionary dealing with hope in a faithless world. The world's lack of color is in direct contrast with that of the Zone, which acts as a sort of salvation. The Zone ins natural yet ugly, looking like a wasteland as abandoned as faith in Tarkovsky's world.
A lesser script would have made this an action film, but 'Stalker' slows down and takes its time. The writer and professor each represent two deeply human sides of the same coin, i.e. One that is emotion and the other rational. Near the climax of the film, they both seem to have lost faith in the Zone in a dazzling wide long take with the camera zooming out that must not be spoiled. Tarkovsky, a Christian himself., never explicitly states the film views. Is the world's demise due to a lack of faith or is causality reversed? We do not know. And Tarkovsky is not interested in answering that question.
The final shot of the film is one of the most meaningful shots in all of cinema. We see the stalker's daughter leaning on a table through a close-up. We zoom out seeing three glasses moving unmotivated. One may wonder if the girl has some form of telekinetic ability. We zoom out further and hear a rumbling noise. A train or subway system is to be suspected. I believe there are two main interpretations. The first states that whatever caused the noise also caused the glasses to move, after all, light travels faster than sound. It is blunt and logical, the professor's view of the world. Science and rationale keep intact. The second is more fantastical. The girl has a telekinetic ability. Unlike her father, she is mostly seen in color. It represents the divine and unknown. We see the future the youth hold. She is young, innocent, and seemingly gifted. Through faith, the young are empowered. Like Tarkovsky before me, I once again ask you this question: Is the bleakness of the world caused by its lack of faith or is its lack of faith caused by its bleakness?