Ferreting Out The Best Films I’ve Never Seen

While looking for something completely different at my local library, I came across a book I couldn’t resist. It was written by journalist Robert K. Elder, as a follow-up to his 2011 volume, The Film that Changed My Life. For that book, which garnered respectful reviews from film geeks like Leonard Maltin, Elder interviewed working directors about the films that had helped mold their own aesthetic.  In 2013, Elder was back with a sequel of sorts, The Best Film You’ve Never Seen. Talking mostly to those directors he had featured in his previous book, Elder here sussed out a list of obscure films that (for whatever reason) we movie lovers should know better.

 Part of the fun of The Best Film You’ve Never Seen is discovering movies about which we have little or no prior knowledge. The always perverse Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse) makes a good case for an obscure indie called The Honeymoon Killers. And John Waters, the celebrated purveyor of deliberately skanky films like Pink Flamingos, argues persuasively that the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton misfire known as Boom! can be a source of viewer delight.  The book has also alerted me to the dubious joys of Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

 Some of the directors’ choices are surprising. Several selected big studio productions from bygone eras. The late Peter Bogdanovich, who always had a passion for the stylistics of long ago, endorsed a 1932 Ernst Lubitsch gem, Trouble in Paradise. I’ve seen this frothy film about con artists and thieves, and can vouch for its charm. (Notably, it was selected in 1991 for inclusion in the National Film Registry.) I guess its age makes it obscure to most of today’s moviegoers, but what about Richard Curtis’s selection, Breaking Away? This amiable coming-of-age comedy about bicycle racing in Bloomington, Indiana, won an Academy Award for its Steve Tesich screenplay, and was nominated for four other Oscars, including Best Picture. I enjoy realizing that Curtis, known for such very English romantic farces as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually, is enamored of Tesich and Peter Yates’ cozy slice of Americana.

 It's fitting, I guess, that Bill Condon—best recalled for splashy Hollywood musicals like Chicago and Dreamgirls—would endorse Bob Fosse’s first screen directorial effort, Sweet Charity. But who would have guessed that Kevin Smith, the outrageous indie director of Clerks, would have a thing for Fred Zinnemann’s (and Paul Scofield’s) 1966 Best-Picture winner,  A Man for All Seasons? It seems that Smith’s Catholic school education, and the efforts of one particular nun, have made him passionate about Sir Thomas More’s doomed efforts to save the One True Church back during the reign of Henry VIII. Smith has high praise for the filmmaking as well as the subject matter, which he expresses in very Kevin Smith fashion. Book author Elder asks the question; “You’ve said that A Man for All Seasons is ‘porn for somebody who loves language.’ How does it differ from regular, missionary-position dialogue in other movies?” And here is Smith’s reply: “Because every line of dialogue is a close-up jizz shot to some degree or a really great close-up on double penetration.”  (You can’t get much more eloquent than that.)

 Reading this book has made me eager to check out some films I’ve only heard of, like Frank Perry’s The Swimmer and Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (produced in the same year as his great triumph, Gigi).  And I’ll be pondering Henry Jaglom’s take on his friend and mentor Orson Welles’ F for Fake, which Jaglom tantalizingly calls “the most autobiographical of Orson’s films.”

 

Finding Love (Actually) by Believing in “Yesterday”

‘Tis the season for Richard Curtis. A recent Los Angeles Times article singled out  2003’s Love Actually, written by Curtis and also his debut as a film director, for being essential December viewing. And so it is, if you enjoy British cinema stars (Hugh Grant! Emma Thompson! Bill Nighy! Mr. Bean!) searching for—and finding—love amid snow flurries, Christmas parties, and other holiday merriment. I first fell for Curtis in 1994, when he took the concept of a wedding movie and quadrupled it. Four Weddings and a Funeral had it all: lots of flowers, lots of bridesmaids in poufy dresses, lots of lovelorn singles looking for their special someone. And, of course, there was the funeral, reminding us that, amid all the saccharine happily-ever-after, love sometimes comes to a permanent end.

 Curtis is big on concepts. (Call them gimmicks if you must.) For instance, there’s 1999’s Notting Hill, which posits that a film star at the height of her international fame (Julia Roberts) makes a romantic connection with a shy, quirky London bookshop owner (High Grant).  Inevitably, the paparazzi descend, and  . . .  well, the course of true love never did run smooth. Less of a megahit but equally charming is 2013’s About Time, starring Dombnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, and the invaluable Bill Nighy, in a romantic film that also encompasses family relationships by adding a dash of time travel to the mix. 

 More recently, Curtis has branched into film and TV adaptations and sequels (see Doctor Who, War Horse, as well as several Bridget Jones and Mamma Mia films), without doing much in the way of originals. But he did try something rather new in 2019, although it too is an adapted version of someone else’s concept. Yesterday (2019) is based on a story by TV writer/producer Jack Barth, best known for his work on The Simpsons. (Barth who gets a story credit on Yesterday, apparently has griped that Curtis wrongly claims authorship of some of his own plot devices. But, at age 62, Barth became perhaps the oldest person in Hollywood to see his first screenplay produced, after 25 unsuccessful tries, so I’d say he’s doing all right.)

 So what’s Yesterday about? The title is an homage to the Paul McCartney song we all know and love. But in the world of the film, a young British singer-songwriter who’s recovering from a strange road accident suddenly discovers he’s alone in the universe in having any recollection of the Beatles. This makes it easy for him to claim that the entire Beatles canon is his own work, and fame and fortune soon follow. For a while he enjoys the ride, but he can’t help feeling guilty. And his growing celebrity within the music industry threatens his relationship with the nice young woman who’s loved him for years. You can probably guess the ending.

 Curtis left the directing of Yesterday to the talented Danny Boyle, an Oscar winner for Slumdog Millionaire. Perhaps it was Boyle’s experience in the Indian sub-continent that led him to cast a Brit of Indian descent, Himesh Patel, as his Yesterday leading man, in a film that was not at all about race and ethnicity. A nice bit of diversity, that. The cast also includes pop star Ed Sheeran, nicely playing a version of himself. But the real star is the Beatles’ greatest hits: the rumor is that some $10 million was paid for the right to use classic songs from their catalogue. The Fab Four and their survivors have signaled their love for the film, including a surprise cameo I will not divulge.