Now, I realize that’s a ridiculous claim to make. There must be millions of other people who thought that this film — this amazing, genre-hopping, non-linear, experimental, restless film, the only film that has ever really felt like actual love feels — was like some inner voice finally expressing their own tragicomic take on romance and New York and literature and snobbery and, oh, basically everything contained within the universe that this film encompasses. But Jewish men… we own this film. Sorry to everyone else, but there are things about Annie Hall that will simply make no sense to you unless you have a Y chromosome and a circumcision. This, more than any other film or play or book every produced, is really written in our language. The insane fantasy contained here — the nebbish woos the shiksa from Chippewa Falls — may not be the life story of each and every one of us, but something about it just clicks, psychologically and culturally, in ways that are hard to explain to people from the outside. How do you explain Alvy’s trepidations about Annie’s assimilation into goyishe West Coast culture to someone for whom these things make no difference? How do you explain the preoccupation with death, the nervousness, the pastrami-on-white-bread scene, the chaotic family life, the paranoia about Jewish identity, the huge significance of every culture-clash moment shared between Alvy and Annie? To goyim, the lobster scene is just a moment of slapstick comedy; to people with the “decoder ring,” it’s a haunting, even deep scene about rejecting Jewish values and abandoning the mythos of Jewish tradition. I’m not kidding. If you don’t see this, it’s because you were never meant to.

This is not only my favorite Best Picture winner. It’s also my favorite Woody Allen film, which says a lot. I don’t think he ever addressed the major themes of his creative career better than he does in Annie Hall. It’s sort of like his greatest hits, wrapped up in a surprisingly innovative package that feels authentic, inspired, challenging, unyieldingly romantic. How anyone could give it anything other than a 10/10 is beyond me.

Now, thank GOD we can finally watch this movie again whenever we feel like it. Phew!

Everything about this movie is so funny and lovable and bittersweet. It would take a hard heart not to fall in love with adorable, clumsy, bashful Annie (Diane Keaton). And Woody Allen’s incessant, pretentious commentary on everyone else’s incessant pretentiousness holds true today. I think I just relate to Alvy Singer. Forget Tay-Sachs, anxiety and neuroses are the ultimate Ashkenazi Jewish disease. This is what happens when you think too much–you develop an inability to like anyone or anything new based on the insanely high standards you invariably develop. I love it, though. As obnoxious and annoying as Woody Allen is, he represents why I’m proud to be Jewish.

On a completely different note, this movie makes me nostalgic for the 70s, a decade I did not live through. The sunglasses frames, Annie’s buns plopped on top of her head, women-in-menswear, Paul Simon’s Oompa-Loompa haircut…I think I just see my parents as being Alvy and Annie. If you look at pictures from the time, it’s really true. My dad was very European, short, and Jewishy, with a scowl to boot, and my mom was beautiful and waspy with long, thick red hair. And they both wore hilarious 70s glasses frames. Oh well. This movie is the one I’ve been looking forward to the most, because now that we’ve watched it within the context of this project, I can watch it whenever I want. 10/10

Stallone wrote the screenplay himself, which is why a) it’s mostly a refried cliche-fest and b) he gets all the best lines. It’s not a first-rate screenplay, but it lives and breathes and has a really wonderful authenticity to it. It’s funny to watch the scenes where Rocky is on TV promoting the fight, because he’s so timid in front of the cameras. When he’s in his natural habitat — greasy meat packing plants, run down homes, gritty back alleys with kids yelling “Yo Rocky!” — he’s funny and loose and just insanely charming. No, Rocky Balboa is not the first boxer-turned-bum to be the subject of a Best Picture winner (the honor also belongs to Brando’s Terry Malloy) and he may be a less nuanced character than other great film heroes, but when he’s yammering and wooing Adrian (a really wonderful Talia Shire, in a much better role than Connie Corleone) and running and throwing fists, it’s impossible to take your eyes off of him. At some points, you do want to yell at the screen, “we get it! You’re a no-goodnik goomba trying to make it big in a tough world!” And yet, he makes it all work. Whether it’s good acting or just sort of being the character — he was basically a nobody before this came out — is tough to tell.

The film benefits from being absolutely gorgeous. I had forgotten how amazing the cinematography was. Weirdly enough, it kept reminding me of the composition and camerawork I really adored in West Side Story — it has a lot of the same hues, the same rain-soaked back alleys, the same bleak buildings and parking lots. This is a textbook case of how to shoot gritty locations and make them look crisp, bright, and pretty. All you need to do is watch the awesome, iconic montage (which is the perfect mix of cheesy music, super-70′s camerawork, and astonishing editing) and you’ll get a sense of this film’s aesthetic strengths. It might even be possible that the great look of the film masks a lot of the other problems, but who am I to care?

One of my housemates used to have a sort of sleazy live-in boyfriend whose main virtue was his amazing stories about living and working in Philadelphia. He used to work in the cafe of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and he probably had ten or fifteen great stories about cheesy, hilarious ways that people used the “Rocky steps” — weddings, group photos, music videos, engagements, banquets. Rocky is an indelible part of our cultural landscape, and while it hits us over the head with its dopey-local-boy-makes-good storyline maybe a bit too often, we continue to celebrate the small joys of the “steps” scene because it speaks to the dumb, triumphalist American inside all of us. Yes, it beat out far better films (Network, Taxi Driver, and All the President’s Men), but as we all recall from Robert Altman’s Nashville, when the bicentennial came around, everyone was in the mood for some cheesy, life-affirming, lowbrow fare. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but 8/10.

P.S. One of my housemates just came in and said, “What movie did you just watch? Rambo?”

I know that not every good or great movie has to be about things I like. I mean, On the Waterfront is about longshoremen, boxing, and pigeons. Not so much my kind of movie. So I tried this time to give Rocky a chance, even though I hate Stallone and Shire, Philadelphia, and boxing. No dice. I am not and probably never will be a fan of Rocky Balboa. I am a fan of this BP project, though, because now I notice that this is the second movie in a row to mention Rocky Marciano (McMurphy says, “Rocky Marciano’s got 40 [fights] and he’s a millionaire.”) I am also a fan of developing a critical nerdy eye for movie-watching, because I noticed during one of Rocky’s training scenes when he was doing some weird variation on a pushup that the shot subtly cut to another shot of him doing it. Poor splicing, guys!

Anyway, this movie can’t possibly compare to the Stallone movie to come out the year before, 1975′s Death Race 2000. No, but seriously, I give Rocky: First Blood a 5/10.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is an astonishing film, and while people tend to point to the two central performances — Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher — as the lynchpins of the affair, it’s really an amazing ensemble piece. Every guy in the asylum with McMurphy is an indelible character. Forman and his screenwriters have the courage to instruct these actors to let their freak flags fly, and the results are amazing. It would be easy to fill a film with a bunch of mockable loonies, but the men in Ratched’s ward are less insane than they are emotionally wounded, confused, and abandoned by society. Forman goes to great lengths to show how their various mental and emotional problems both help them to connect and isolate them from one another; the exuberance of the World Series scene and all their whacked out poker games is matched by the crushing despair of the “correctional” scenes — the unforgettable shock therapy scene, the dismal group therapy scenes, and the horrifying climax

The film almost always feels like a product of the 60′s, rather than the mid-70′s. When McMurphy and his friends are exploring their inner psychoses and the insanity of the outside world, the film is freewheeling, madcap, and maybe even a tad hypnotic. We are fully a part of their world, which is why Nurse Ratched’s intense obsession with structure and control make her seem like a pure villain. Really, she’s more of a long-suffering wife or mother figure, dealing constantly with the violent outbursts and the unpredictability of her patients. I have a bit of a problem with the film’s eagerness to paint her as the quintessential corrupt power figure, but I’ll save that for an academic essay. What I’m getting at is that this film is gleefully anti-authoritarian, dealing with a lot of the same issues Stanley Kubrick tackled in A Clockwork Orange, albeit in a less stifled and formalistic manner. The spirit of Cuckoo’s Nest roams free, and in the morale-crushing wake of the Nixon years, Nicholson’s audacious and rebellious McMurphy is a perfect echo of the gleeful, counter-cultural anarchy of the mid-to-late 60′s. The amazing sequence where all the men escape and go fishing is like Hair (also Forman’s work) but with crazy people. It’s just an amazing, unbounded, wondrous, and truly iconic moment in film history.

There’s a great moment in the film, and it might be the finest of Jack Nicholson’s entire career. Right at the end of the all-night bacchanal, Forman catches him in the middle of silent contemplation on the windowsill. The window is open and he has a chance to escape, but instead he just relishes the moment, letting a grin slip here and there, and the audience wonders — is he really crazy? Does he love the asylum too much to leave? McMurphy is not just a rabid anarchist and a practical joker… he’s a truly complex, unorthodox creature, and this quiet moment captures everything that needs to be said about him. During the final moments of the film, when McMurphy’s mutinous reign is extinguished by the cruelty of the powers that be, it’s impossible not to feel defeated and horrified by the unforgiving tyranny of the “sane world.” That Nicholson makes us care so deeply about this outlandish misfit is the ultimate testament to his skills as an actor.

There have been a million films about the triumph of the human spirit and the irrational means that humans use to get by, but there just aren’t many films that capture the need to deliver us from the chains of bondage as buoyantly and as perceptively as this one. This loose, intelligent, and overwhelmingly great film earns a 10/10.

Occasionally the theme (“Who is REALLY insane?”) gets a little gimmicky. But the characters are so great. Especially Cheswick, the whiny neurotic one who asks Nurse Ratched for his cigarettes. And McMurphy really does care about these guys and want them to do well, as evidenced by his going back to see what happened to Billy and doing what he does to Nurse Ratched. The greatest scene in the movie is the one in which McMurphy hijacks the bus and takes everyone fishing. Masquerading as doctors in their own mental institution, they have a fun, lazy, silly day out at sea. Everything about this scene is so charming and heartwarming. Sure, McMurphy is a violent statutory rapist, but he just wants everyone to have a little fun in their lives.

I think I could watch this movie a million times and never get tired of it, and I plan to try now that I own the DVD. Especially since I found out most of Nicholson’s dialogue with Brooks (the actor who plays the psychiatrist who initially evaluates him) was improvised, so Brooks really was reacting to Nicholson’s “that little red beaver” comment. And apparently some of Louise Fletcher’s nasty glances were actually her reaction to Milos Forman’s incessant direction. Also, Brad Dourif, who plays Billy, went on to play Wormtongue in LOTR:TT. Anyway, it’s pretty obviously a 10/10.

I’ve been waiting for almost two years to have this chance to rewatch The Godfather Part II and fully articulate my numerous problems with it. I had seen it at the beginning of my college career and felt truly disappointed, but before watching it tonight, my father implored me to give this film a second chance. Sorry, Dad.

Imagine you’re Francis Ford Coppola for a second. You’ve just made your sprawling yet intimate masterpiece, and everyone wants more. You have a three-plus hour canvas on which to flesh out the brilliant tragedies of the first installment. But instead, you opt for a cumbersome, jarring sketch of a handful of tiny, trivial, maybe even pointless anecdotes in the lives of previously fascinating film characters. This Frankenstein of a film — culled from a grab bag of decent parts and stitched together awkwardly and obtusely — serves little purpose but to remind us of what an organic, warm, intelligent treat the first film is. For the entire running time of Part II, as ideas get stretched thin and the plot aggressively overstays its welcome, we can’t help but recall the tremendous pleasures of its predecessor — the funny and subtle performance of Marlon Brando, the rise (or is it fall?) of Michael Corleone and the intimate time we spend watching his descent into the crime underworld, the rich subplots in Italy and elsewhere. I could go on. The Michael segments of Part II are a bleak death march. The rich emotional tones of the first film are replaced here by one single sustained note: Michael is cruel, ruthless, vindictive, etc., and there is no way to approach this other than overdone pathos. Soul-crushingly banal plotlines, such as Michael’s various business dealings in Vegas/Cuba, the Senate hearings, the shocking revelation about Kay’s abortion, keep the Michael parts trudging along in a constant state of morose self-possession. In widening the scope of the Corleone drama, Coppola and Puzo completely lose themselves. It’s like C-SPAN and CNBC rolled into one.

There is still quite a bit of good in this film, and I should state emphatically that I don’t dislike this film the way I dislike American Pie: Band Camp or other pure trash flicks. I dislike it partially because the Michael segments are such an insult to the first film, and partially because they’re such an insult to the flawless — yes, absolutely flawless — handling of the “young Vito” narrative. I don’t have a broad enough vocabulary to express my deep admiration for the artistry in this third (or so) of the film. First of all, it may contain some of the most beautiful, iconic moments in cinematography history: the festa, the train leaving Corleone, nearly every scene on the busy and beautiful streets of tenement-era New York City. DeNiro’s performance matches Brando’s note for note, in humor, physical presence, and hypnotic fascination. Is Michael simply an uninteresting character? This film would suggest that Vito’s life arc is really the only interesting one, but we know from the first film that Michael is a brilliant character, and that the weak and joyless turns his life takes in the late 50′s are really just an embarrassing mishandling of a potentially great epic life story. Oh, and seemingly just to taunt us, the closing moments of this film offer us a heartbreaking glimpse into the world of the first film — with Sonny, Carlo, and Vito still intact. It’s a chilling sequence that serves as a proper coda to Part II, as well as a reminder of why the modest intimacy of the original works so much better than the heavy-handed gloominess of the second film.

The ultimate shame of The Godfather Part II is that in overemphasizing the unbearably bleak and tepid Vegas/Cuba Michael story, Coppola and Puzo miss out on giving young Vito his full due. This dark, haunting, gorgeous, and highly atmospheric section deserves a full, proper film of its own. Instead, it’s gracelessly glued to a lumbering 2-hour slog, full of soulless ghosts wandering around their tacky homes. It’s sort of like watching Padma Lakshmi tie the knot with Salman Rushdie, or Carla Bruni with Nicolas Sarkozy, or Marilyn Monroe with Arthur Miller. Why do beautiful things always pair up with such ugly ones?

Vito’s 1/3 of the film gets a 10. Michael’s 2/3 gets a 5. Overall, the film is a muddled mess that clearly needed some more work, some more love, and clearly some more Brando. 6/10. But TV Guide says it’s the BEST FILM OF ALL TIME. So what do I know?

In addition to judging it as part of this Godfather saga, I also made sure to keep an open mind and watch it as a movie, separate from the first. As a movie, not as a sequel, it was definitely good. There was a lot of great drama–Robert Duvall’s Tom Hagen and Talia Shire’s Connie Corleone started to actually feel like substantial characters. And, of course, John Cazale’s Fredo. Fredo is really the star of this movie. He is the only character we genuinely feel for. The whole Hyman Roth and Frank Pentangeli business was a little bit hard to follow, and I think I’m gonna have to watch it again to fully grasp it all. I think my favorite scene was when Tom Hagen went to Senator Geary, who had been with a prostitute when she was murdered. It’s implied that Michael orchestrated this to get Geary on his side as an ally, and it is just so totally messed up (in a way that I love movies to be).

I think the biggest problem about this movie is that 1958-1959 Nevada is just not as pretty as 1945-early 50s in New York. The colors of the first movie are so much eerier and prettier. Everything about this movie felt very much like my least favorite part of the first movie–when Michael goes to talk to Moe Greene in Vegas. Trashy, bright t-shirts do not mesh well with elegant Sicilian mafia families. The only shots I remember loving in this movie took place in the prequel portion with Robert DeNiro. Anyway, it’s an 8/10.

There’s not really much to say about the Sting. It’s really just entertaining and fun ’til the end. The viewer is in on the joke, but there is a little bit of a twist, which really makes the con as delightful for us to watch as it must have been for Hooker and Gondorff to carry out. Eitan pointed out a similarity to the French Connection (a chase scene underneath and in the subway station). I think everything about the Sting is like the muted, family-friendly French Connection. Instead of a sleazy drug ring, we see the glamour of conning Irish mafia lords. Clearly, in 1936, the Great Depression was nearing its end, but it seems to me that it’s still a time period conducive to a depressing atmosphere. The Sting acknowledges its chronological setting when Hooker mentions the Depression, but it gives us an alternate view. On the other hand, the French Connection takes a time period that is not especially gritty and shows us the scummiest, most unsavory side of it. Of course, I could just be falling victim to the typical moviegoing trap–thinking anything with Robert Redford in it is polished and pretty and everything else is dirty by comparison.

I think I’ve stopped making sense. This happens when I have little to say about a movie. But I like it. 9/10

Of course, reuniting the two boy geniuses from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid has something to do with it. Sometimes, it seems like “chemistry” was a term invented to describe what Paul Newman and Robert Redford share; every sly look, every thumb of the nose, every boyish cackle and shared moment of too-clever planning is executed flawlessly by these guys. It’s a shame they only made two films together. Nowadays, we’re used to con man or crime movies where everyone is playing everyone, and the whole film is nothing but a shambolic web of blink-and-you-miss-it lies and deception — yeah, we get it… the audience gets the biggest con. Here though, mostly because Newman and Redford are too good together, we assume that the film isn’t playing nasty tricks on us. It’s their show, and we’re along for the ride.

The film looks and sounds great too. While The Godfather uses dark browns and beiges to capture the slippery morals and dark machinations of the crime world, The Sting uses the very same color palette to create a playful and engaging world. The back alleys, the sham storefronts, the poker room on the train, and the “FBI lair” are drained of their color so we can pay attention to the richness of the performances and the decidedly non-showy cleverness of the screenplay. (It does take a lot of work to craft a screenplay this quick and witty and have it not descend into smug, self-referential gooeyness.) This is a film that wisely asks the audience to view its inner world as a comedy, even as most of the actors are playing it straight. There are no cheap-o gags and no yuks. Every laugh, especially the ones after a long buildup, such as in the pitch-perfect Newman vs. Shaw poker scene, is well-earned.

I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a good heist/con caper. Even the pompous and self-important Oceans Eleven has stayed with me over the years. There’s something magical about watching a long con unfold. I love sitting back and seeing how every little element — the bogus sets, the fake accents and mustaches, the slick sleights of hand, every little prop required to make “The Wire” con work so simply and so well — comes together to form something too sinister and well-thought-out to dismiss as just a prank. And it helps the film, rather than hinders, that George Roy Hill and author David Ward lay out the film within the simple narrative framework of showing each part of the con (“The Set-Up,” “The Hook,” “The Sting,” etc.) as it plays out.

The Sting is really just a lovely film, and one of the only Best Picture winners that allows itself to be nothing more than pure, smart entertainment. It’s far from perfect, and it definitely drags at the end, but it’s tough to give it demerits when it all congeals so perfectly. 9/10.

But seriously, I feel like I did when I was forced to write about Casablanca. What can you possibly say about such a cinematic masterpiece that hasn’t been said? Absolutely nothing. So I’ll say the things that have been said by others but that come to my mind right now. I think that about 90% of the shots in this movie are completely iconic. If you’d never seen it before, you would still recognize it from almost any still image. Part of this is the use of color and light. No other movie looks like the Godfather (though I haven’t seen parts 2 or 3 yet, so maybe they do as well).

Though I’ve never read Mario Puzo’s book upon which this movie is based, I have heard pretty awful things. But Puzo collaborated with Coppola on the screenplay, and it turned out pretty amazing, so I think maybe this story just needed the medium of film. This was my second time watching the Godfather, and it was actually better this time. I am very much looking forward to seeing part 2 now and recognizing all the classic lines I know so well (especially, “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.”) You can tell I’m scrounging for things to say.

Oh, one stupid little note. I remember the first time I saw Boogie Nights, which was a few months after the first time I saw the Godfather. In the scene in Boogie Nights where Floyd Gondoli came to Jack Horner to ask him to switch to video, I was reminded of the scene in the Godfather where Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo asks Don Corleone to join the narcotics industry. Boogie Nights has since become one of my favorite movies, but this is the first time I’ve had the privilege to watch the Godfather since. Honestly, there are a number of Jack Horner/Don Corleone parallelisms, and I’m excited to watch Boogie Nights soon (as I probably watch it every other month or so) in this context. Obviously, the Godfather gets a 10/10

It’s basically pointless to try to write something breezy and clever about The Godfather. So much ink has been spilled over it already, and by much more talented and insightful people — not to mention the fact that every human who takes him or herself seriously has seen this film by now and has their own approach. Someone once said that batting against Sandy Koufax was like eating soup with a fork, and that’s pretty much how I feel about tackling The Godfather in a critical way. Like any great art — Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Mozart — The Godfather is too epic, too perfect, too unassailably well-constructed to comment on and then feel good about myself in the morning. Maybe this is a cop-out, but I honestly can’t start breaking this film apart into its constituent units and letting you know how much I love it. My admiration for and fear of this movie should be self-evident.

Most American films live in the shadow of this behemoth, and for good reasons. From the first lines — a paean to immigrant values — to the last — a powerful passing of the torch to a first-generation American — it is truly our nation’s finest film. It’s not my favorite, not by a long shot, but if there has ever been a better rendering of the 20th century American story on film, I definitely don’t know about it.

10/10.

After Patton, which is a largely cerebral exercise, The French Connection is a huge relief. It’s a big, loud, kinetic, bloody pulp film with porkpie hats, big guns, the best (and best-edited) car chase in the history of cinema, and a host of absolutely iconic shots featuring various police officers snooping through the gritty streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn, hot in pursuit of deliciously evil French goons who somehow discover a way out every time. That was a run-on sentence, but this is really a run-on movie; it’s constantly in a state of dizzy climax, moving from setpiece to setpiece with that zippy, intoxicating “New Hollywood” feel. Hackman and Scheider deliver pitch-perfect performances; even though I don’t think their characters are that deep per se, there’s a lot in Cloudy and Popeye that you can sink your teeth into. There’s no showy compassion, there’s no silly moments of introspection, there’s no feigned complexity. These are guys who do their job well and live by the skin of their teeth, and Hackman and Scheider capture the grit and professionalism of these two characters perfectly. The only misstep, perhaps, is the gratuitous post-coital scene in Popeye’s apartment. Sure, it’s funny that he picked up the biker girl, and it’s even funnier that she cuffed him to the bed with his own cuffs, but a scene so removed from the plot should tell us something about who these guys are. Instead, it’s a five minute piffle in the middle of a taut, suspenseful police procedural. 

And about that car chase, because no discussion of The French Connection is complete without a discussion of those fifteen glorious minutes. A lot of films since 1971 have attempted to recapture the magic of Friedkin’s most audacious setpiece. Speed, The Matrix Reloaded, The Italian Job, Ronin, Terminator 3, Crank, every post-Moore Bond film, you name it. This particular car chase is incredible because it feels real and terrifying, and it’s absolutely integral to the plot. There’s no goofy-ass fruit carts or plate glass windows here; it’s basically hand-to-hand combat, but the fighters are a busted coupe and a speeding subway. The tension and excitement of the scene doesn’t come from shit blowing up — it comes from Doyle’s raw desperation and heroism. 

This is far from a perfect film, and it feels quite dated. But it’s hard to deny that the Academy made a VERY non-traditional pick here — even moreso than with Midnight Cowboy, which was basically a romance film — and they picked a truly exciting genre film at that. A solid 8/10.

Really, the car chase scene on its own is the perfect movie, edited flawlessly. Nearing forty years later, and they’re still making video games that attempt to be as cool. This endless determination, never looking back (except for when you almost run over a baby carriage), running into everything in your way, smashing up the car like crazy — it is the ultimate cop movie scene. So yes, I will be giving this movie a 9/10, in spite of its awful first 45 minutes.

I guess I’m supposed to talk about George C. Scott’s performance and how great it was. It was great. Really. I can see why it’s ranked in great performances lists. And I love the anecdote about why he refused to accept his Oscar–the competition between actors being a “meat parade.” Interesting dude, playing an interesting dude. But I have little interest in watching an interesting actor play an interesting asshole for three hours, interspersed with battle scenes. Not my thing.

Awesome editing and cool cinematography/art direction bring it up to a 7/10.

This is not to say that Patton is a disappointment or a bore. It’s very far from that. And while it is perhaps one of the most straight-laced Best Picture winners ever — it certainly lacks the colorful flamboyance and rhetorical flourishes of Lawrence of Arabia — it is clearly a film as gritty, odd, tough, and passionate as its subject. General Patton was many things: a rebel, a genius, a raving psycho, a grandstander, a shameless self-promoter, a brave man with few hesitations. George C. Scott’s thunderous, performance captures all that and more. He stomps through scenes, cackles, plots and speechifies, and generally acts like the brilliant wart on the US Army’s butt that he really was. Comparing it to his performance as Gen. Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove, it’s hard not to feel like Scott was more or less typecast; then again, maybe this is the role he was always supposed to play. In Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean captures the simmering intellect and the proud weirdness of the poet warrior at the center of the story through outlandish visuals. Patton provides a daring look at the other grand creature of the desert, and it is the film’s overall matter-of-factness (while still allowing Patton’s lunatic humor to shine through) that shows us how and why this larger than life human being came about.

The second half of the film is undoubtedly better than the first. Moving to familiar territory — I hate to be Euro-centric, but most of what I care about in WWII was the post-D-Day campaigns in Italy, France, and Germany — the film picks up the pace and gives us a look at a man desperately trying to regain (or maybe gain for the first time) a sense of glory and power that his higher-ups took away from him. From his funny and warm speech at the Doughnut Club to powerful and evocative moments on the snow-filled battlefields of Bastogne, we get a glimpse of the kind of man Patton was when he was trying to prove something — as opposed to the first half, when we get the man who thinks he’s already proved everything. It’s a more humanizing act in the story, and the beautiful cinematography and elegant pacing serve to highlight the robustness of Patton’s one-of-a-kind personality within the context of the larger European war. 

It’s somewhat odd that the Academy picked this film, which is really not an anti-war film by any stretch of the imagination, for Best Picture during the waning days of the Vietnam War. Every other war film to win the award — All Quiet on the Western Front, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Deer Hunter, and Platoon — is loaded to the brim with cynicism about the art and execution of battle, and yet this war-glorifying film came in the midst of the most hated military operation in our nation’s history. It’s just curious.

I always prefer films about soldiers to films about commanding officers. It’s simply more interesting to watch the day to day struggles of “regular guys” than it is to watch grown men sit around a table and count the nameless, faceless casualties. But Patton is a powerful film that has always stuck with me and probably always will, regardless of the distance it keeps from the real horrors of the battlefield. I give it a 9/10.