#152. Some Housekeeping, and a Best-Of List
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This is a solo Sonny episode, a bonus dispatch with no co-hosts and no new-release review. Sonny opens with housekeeping: Vic has officially left the show (and immediately cancelled his AMC A-List membership now that he's done trudging to theaters), a permanent new third host is lined up but can't start until February, and in the meantime the show will keep running weekly with rotating guest hosts, likely tackling Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or Glass Onion next. With no film to review, Sonny fills the hour by unveiling the Sight & Sound top-10 list nobody at the British Film Institute's decennial critics poll bothered to ask him for, running through his picks in chronological rather than ranked order — Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Goodfellas, The Matrix, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Zero Dark Thirty — while explaining his self-imposed one-film-per-director rule and needling the actual 2022 poll for shutting out the Coen brothers entirely and crowning Jeanne Dielman over Citizen Kane. He digresses into why Kubrick is his favorite director, name-checks Ty West's and the RRR director's own top-10 lists for comparison, and reveals Apocalypto narrowly missed the cut at number eleven. He signs off promising to explain next week, with JVL and a mystery guest host, exactly how he managed to injure his gluteus maximus while bowling.
From the show notes
Merry Christmas and a happy new year, we'll see you in 2023.
Full transcript
Sonny00:00:00Hey, everybody. It's Sonny. I just am popping in here for a quick ramble off the top of my head of some housekeeping stuff. You know, a couple of people have asked what we're going to do with the show now that Vic has left. Vic has abandoned you specifically, all the listeners. I know, but Vic, I'm sure everybody could tell was growing more and more weary of the fact that he's gone. Going to the movie theater. He was not joking when he said the first thing he canceled was AMC Plus or whatever, whatever their A-list, the AMC A-list, because he is he's just done with that. So it was there was no I didn't want to, you know, tie him to a chair and make him do this. I could I could have gone to his house every day and tied him to a chair. It would have been more money than this show brings in. But, you know, whatever. But no, he he's gone. We have a we have a guest host, a new permanent guest host lined up, but he can't start until February. So we're going to we're waiting. We're waiting a little bit until everything is squared away with him to announce that and get it get it together. But we're going to do you know, we're going to be doing episodes every week with fill in guests and that sort of thing. So that'll be it'll be good. It'll be good till we get there. Starting next week, we may be doing the new Puss in Boots, either that or the Glass Onion. The sequel, one of the two, I think. I don't know. We'll see. Anyway, like I said, I just wanted to do a quick little bit of housekeeping here to let you know that a show is going to continue. We will be coming into 2023 with with new episodes, new hosts, et cetera, et cetera. But I also just want to do a quick little bonus episode because I realized that I did not. You know, nobody asked me. Nobody asked me for my sight and sound top. Nobody at sight and sound was like, hey, Sonny. What are your 10 movies? And for folks who don't know, sight and sound is the magazine put out by the British Film Institute. They do a decennial top 10 list that comes out on on the two years. So 2022, 2012, 2002 before that. It's a big list. It's a reason why basically it's the reason why everyone said, you know, Citizen Kane is the best movie of all time because it was on the top of that list for like five straight decades. But it was dethroned in the last cycle by Vertigo and has been dethroned again by John Dielman. So. It's a Belgian movie. I, you know, I watched that in college. I could not. I couldn't. You could not pay me to watch it again. And I feel like critics are doing a disservice to film lovers, would be film lovers by suggesting that that is the best film of all time. I mean, if you if you folks think Citizen Kane and Vertigo is eating your vegetables, wait till you sit down for John Dielman. It's a it's a it's a treat. But, you know, it's it's a fine film. I saw it many years ago. It's fine. It's not great. But nobody at Sight and Sound had the foresight to ask me for my top 10 and nobody else has asked me for my top 10. So I'm going to give it to you folks. This is the only place that's ever going to be. It's going to be here for the 1600 people who listen to this show. And that's it. You're the only folks who are ever going to hear it. And I figure I'll be dead by the time the next one comes around, either either dead or out of the criticism game entirely. So I don't expect to be asked to participate then either. But here is here is the here's my list. Here is what I would suggest if I were asked to make a Sight and Sound top 10. And I want to preface this just a bit by saying that there are there are different ways of doing such a thing. Like having a 10 greatest movies of all time list, making that list is kind of difficult. And there are ways to do it that come across, for lack of a better word, is a little bit boring. For instance, the director of the director, Ty West, who made. The movies this year, Pearl and X, he's he's directed some other stuff as well. But those were those were he had two or two movies out this year. Good for him. He's here's his list. It's a good list. There there isn't a single movie on this list that you would take that you could categorically say should not be on it. But here's his top 10 Citizen Kane, The Godfather, 2001, A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now, Psycho, Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown, Jaws, Taxi Driver and Easy Rider. Now, look, once again, all of those movies, perfectly acceptable lists. I the only one I wouldn't even consider for my short list would be Easy Rider. I think all the rest of them would be on there at some point, maybe not Sunset Boulevard. I've never been a huge Billy Wilder guy, but like those those are like 10 movies that everyone is like. These are 10 of these are the 10 greatest movies of all time. Nobody would complain about that list. But humorously enough, a lot of people on Twitter. Did complain about it because it's, you know, kind of boring, right? It's like here's here's the intro to film best of list. And I get it. I get it. You want some of these you want these lists to have some personality to them, like the director of the Indian movie RRR had a very interesting list in that it had movies that I would not have expected, such as two directed by Mel Gibson, Apocalypto and Braveheart. And actually, it makes sense when you if you've watched RRR. And you think about the kind of ideological and aesthetic that that director is going for, that co-director is going for. It kind of makes sense to think about, you know, what what what Gibson is up to. And indeed, Apocalypto on my shortlist did it missed it literally number 11 number of my number 11 movie is Apocalypto. So people should check that out. But, you know, when you're putting together a top 10 list like this, you want it to reflect at least a little bit of not. Not just the greatest films of all time, but the greatest films of all time that also shaped kind of how you think about movies and how you see movies, because that is really the power of cinema, right? It's to change how you see the world. So with that in mind, let me just throw out my top 10. And this is in this is in chronological order. This is in the order they came out. So not not there's no this is not one 10 to one, one to 10. This is just by year. So the first one on my list is Citizen Kane. Like, it's a cliche for a reason. Citizen Kane, one of the greatest films of all time. Orson Welles, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. It is a it's a movie that didn't just kind of change how filmmakers looked at making films, but also how critics looked at talking about films. And for all of the weird little things, the weird little stylistic quirks that it did. And there's all sorts of. Fights about who's the true author here and whether or not auteur theory is good or bad. You know, you take it up with Pauline Kael and David Fincher and all the rest. But, you know, Orson Welles is a great director of movies. And Citizen Kane is a is his crowning achievement for good reason. All right. Number two. So that was 1941. 1943 would be the second one. A shadow of a doubt by Hitchcock. Now, there are lots of Hitchcock movies you could pick from. Vertigo, obviously, again, I think is number two on this year's critics list. Psycho is is another very popular one. That one was on, I think, the director's list and the critics list. I can't remember what which or if it was on both. It was definitely on the director's list. I can't remember if it was on the critics list. But the the one that the Hitchcock I love the most is Shadow of a Doubt. Joseph Cotton stars is this kind of roguish uncle who shows up to a little girl's house and she slowly comes to realize that he is not quite the man he is believed to be. And it's just a masterpiece in revealing information visually. And there's there are these great sequences where she is kind of like looking up a staircase at him and it's getting more and more, you know, Baroque and evil. Like you could never think a staircase arm rail could be evil. But here you go. So check that out. Shadow of a doubt has a great new 4K transfer. You can pick it up at groove.com. Great, great movie. Looks looks very good in the new one. Apparently, I still haven't gotten it myself because I've been I'm trying to work through the many, many movies. I still have to watch that I purchased. All right. Number three on my list. Dr. Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. I would that came out in 1964. It's by Kubrick. And there are two things. That I want to. There are two kind of points I want to make here about this list. One is that it is an auteur heavy list. And as such, I tried to or I did limit it to just one per director. I could have made a list that was half Kubrick films easily. He's my favorite director. I can watch all this stuff. And I've I've I've written about this before. But I think the thing about Kubrick and the reason he appeals to so many young cinephiles. He's one of the directors who like get you in to really loving movies is that he. Is he he works in so many different genres. He is an accessible art house director, right? That's basically what it comes down to. So, for instance, Dr. Strangelove is the the funniest black comedy slash satire ever made. It is it's hilarious and pitch black and perfect, right? So, you know, you've got you've got the comedies. He made a couple of great war movies in Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket. He made Sword. In Sandal Picture and Spartacus, though, there's an argument about how much of that movie is really his whatever. He made one of the best horror movies of all time, The Shining, right? He made the best sci-fi movie of all time, 2001, A Space Odyssey. And that's the other movie that would have been on this list potentially. I mean, it is it is a it is an absolute masterpiece, regardless of the folks who think it is too slow. It is not too slow. It's great. And, you know, he made the great one of the greatest costume period dramas. Of all time, Barry Lyndon, also very much a period comedy. It's very funny. Again, very darkly comic. But that that one happens to be Scorsese's favorite. We'll get to him in a minute. But yeah, a Kubrick is I know I know there are some folks who are put off by the darkness and the, you know, the the, you know, he The Shining's not scary. Well, it is. It is a scary, scary movie. But the reason why he. He is such a gateway drug is because he is working in all these very accessible, very understandable genres. He's doing it with style. He's like he has shots that you see in all his movies. They show up from film to film. And that's why folks love him. The Godfather, 1972. Again, I'm limiting this list to one movie from every director or no more than one movie from any director. You know, Coppola had a run in the 1970s where there are four movies that could very easily be on this list. I mean, he wrote Patton in 1970, wins an Oscar for it, right? He wins a Best Writing Oscar for Patton. Then he writes and directs The Godfather, The Conversation and The Godfather Part Two over like a three year stretch from 72 to 74, right? All three of them nominated for Oscars, Best Pictures. Not his. He's nominated for Best Director a bunch of times. And then at the end of the decade, 1979, he's got Apocalypse Now, another movie that goes on on just a ton of these best of lists. He's he's he's making, you know, what is arguably the greatest anti-war film of all time. It's it is it is it is really something else to watch. I do. I do love it. Any of those movies could have been on this list. Again, any of them. But The Godfather is the one that I come back to the most. It really is the one that kind of most appeals to me. And that's why I put it here. 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark against Steven Spielberg here. I there there are a dozen Steven Spielberg movies that could be on this list. I mean, I like he is the quintessential American visual pop artist of the last half of the American century, and it is hard to pick one. It is hard to pick one. But Raiders of the Lost Ark is a perfect movie. It is a perfect action movie. It just goes beat to beat to beat. There's never a dull moment. It never stops. It never slows down. It is, as they say, perfect. So that is why it is on this list. And that the first that's the first five movies. These were all before I was born. The next five are after I was born. That was not a conscious split, but it it's the one I went with because it makes me feel good about myself, even though 1981 pretty close. It's kind of a cheat, but whatever. So number six, the sixth movie on. The. List, Goodfellas, 1990, Scorsese, Martin Scorsese, the greatest of the film brats. Again, there there are five different movies that could have been on this list from him could have been Taxi Driver. It could have been Mean Streets. It could have been it probably wouldn't have been Raging Bull for me, but I do appreciate how great that film is. You know, it could have been it could have been The Wolf of Wall Street, which I think is totally underrated on these best of lists. I think it is it is a kind of masterpiece. Masterpiece of it is the financial equivalent of Goodfellas, except much nastier and much more condemnatory. And the fact that folks thought he was celebrating that lifestyle, idiots surrounded by idiots. No, let's see. Let's move on. 1999, the 1999, one of the great movie years, but not the year that has to move. Not the not the not the one year that has two movies on this list. We'll get to that in a minute. But 1999, The Matrix. From the Wachowskis, the Wachowski siblings. We'll go with that. I, it is hard to describe what this movie is doing to me at the age of 17 or 16 when I first saw it in theaters. It is this movie is to me as Star Wars was, I assume, to the boomers who saw it and then went and saw it again and again and again. It just kind of it kind of blew my mind. In very basic and fundamental ways about what movies could do visually, what they could do narratively. You know, it is and I understand that it's pastiche of all the Eastern martial arts filmmaking that was going on at the time. But I love it, man. I love I still love it. I still love that. I still love that movie. And it is it remains one of the like key cinematic. Touch stones for me. So if you want to understand why my brain is broken, just go back to that. All right. So 2007 is actually the year that has two films on this list. And there are a couple of reasons both these movies are on here. The first is No Country for Old Men by Joel and Ethan Coen. Partly it's on here because I needed a Coen Brothers movie. I find it shameful that there are zero Coen Brothers movies on the critics list of the Sight and Sound 2022 poll. I mean, you could. You could have Raising Arizona on there. You could have The Big Lebowski on there. You could have Fargo on there. You could have A Serious Man on there if you wanted to go a little bit lesser known, a little bit lower key. A Serious Man is one of the great, most profound, most terrifyingly religious films that I've ever seen. It is really something else. But the reason I have No Country for Old Men on here is because it is just... Perfect? It's a perfect movie? It's a perfect movie. And it's a perfect movie about America in a very real way. And that's the same reason I have 2007's There Will Be Blood on here as well by Paul Thomas Anderson. Because A, I kind of wanted a Paul Thomas Anderson movie on here, though I have a much less strong attachment to him than I do the Coens. But I wanted to have There Will Be Blood on here because this is the actual quintessential American movie. It is the movie about the struggle between religion. And business, which is the story of America and the way that business clubs religion to death with a bowling pin in an alley. That's that's that is that's that is the story of America, ladies and gentlemen. That's that's where we've been, which brings me to the last movie on this list, 2012's Zero Dark Thirty, which is, I think, the story of America in the post 9-11 age. And there is no shot in movies that is as. I think gripping, well, gripping is the wrong word. There's no shot in movies that or at least that I have seen in theaters in in an actual theatrical environment, watching it unfold as the shot at the end of this movie, when Jessica Chastain's character just starts sobbing, not at relief, not at happiness, but at the knowledge that she has accomplished her goal and has nothing else to do with her life. Like, what does what does it? It mean to win the war on terror, right? And what does it mean to kind of move beyond that? It is a it is a righteously good. Tick tock narrative style piece of filmmaking. It's a good action, a very good bare bones, like straightforward action picture. It is a it's just. It's just great, great, great filmmaking. And I really feel like it got kind of hosed during award season that year. There was a whole thing with Glenn Greenwald and whether or not the movie glorified torture. It doesn't. But that's neither here nor there. I don't know, man, that that that's my 10. And that list could change literally any day of the week. You could you could ask me any day of the week and I would maybe slip Apocalypto in there instead of. The Matrix or I could get Time Bandits in there instead of Dr. Strangelove or like on the waterfront. I don't even know what would replace on the waterfront or what on the waterfront would replace maybe Shadow of a Doubt. I don't know. But that's a that's a great one. Or, you know, I mentioned it before. Not on the list. Star Wars A New Hope, arguably the most important film of the last six. 60 years in terms of the business of filmmaking and the style of filmmaking and everything else. And it's not on this list because it just it didn't it didn't quite crack it. Like I said, for me, the Matrix is the Star Wars of for my generation and I can only be of my generation. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this ramble. Tune in next week and I'll let you let you know how I managed to enter my gluteus. Maximus while while bowling. Talk about that with JBL and in our special guest host. I'm sure we'll have one, but I'm sure it's fine.
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