I don't normally do "list" posts (usually done as site fillers, it seems),  but after my westerns list (HERE),  I thought I'd try another...it took me a bit to figure out what it would be,  but here goes:

Back in my younger days I had what I believe was a little djinn looking out for the quality of my film exposure.  I would turn on the telly at random times,  and on some magical occasions,  a rare and wonderful film would be just about to start.  I never saw a bad film when it happened, either.  They were all incredible journeys for my young mind,  and they inspired me to look for more like them.  I thought I'd share a few of these...they aren't mind-bendingly rare,  and in fact,  most are common enough that I'd normally not blog about them.  In this case,  they figure deeply into my overall experience as both a movie watcher and as a person.  That deserves a little attention, wot?

Come Next Spring (1956)  Steve Cochran, Ann Sheridan.  

This one is very special to me.  When I was a kid it came on occasionally,  and I savoured every moment each time I watched it...pre-VCR days, don't ya know.  In it, Cochran plays a man who returns after many years to the wife and children he abandoned when he was an extreme drunkard.  His wife,  initially hard and bitter,  slowly softens to him as he proves that his reformation is solid and true.  He weathers the disdain of the townsfolk,  and gradually earns their trust and respect.  It's a solid telling of the classic story of redemption and forgiveness,  and with a wonderful Max Steiner score (although a bit scavenged from SERGEANT YORK, apparently),  you can't help but feel good.  It taught me a lot about forgiveness,  actually,  and it helped in some small way to reconnect with my dad later in life...we're all weak humans,  and COME NEXT SPRING is a very much a story for humans.

A Man Called Horse (1970)  Richard Harris.

This is a midnight stumble for me;  I woke up at a random moment in the middle of the night, turned on the box,  and it was beginning....from the first moment, I was captivated.  Based on a short story of the same name by Dorothy M. Johnson (who also wrote The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance),  it's about an English gentleman on safari in the wilds of America,  shooting wild game for, presumably,  the collection, back in ye jolly olde.  His group of scraggly scouts gets ambushed by Indians, and he's taken captive.  Slowly, in true Edgar Rice Burroughs fashion,  he rises to the status of man,  and becomes a part of the tribe...which makes him an enemy of the other whites.  As I said,  it's very much like a John Carter of Mars-type story,  with the warrior spirit and the (extremely) beautiful princess.  Some will complain about yet another story of a white man becoming the king of some other race,  but I forgive the world for it's foibles.  Especially when the foibles are this exciting!

A Patch of Blue (1965)  Sidney Poitier, Elizabeth Hartman.

I thank God for the day I fell upon this masterpiece of kindness and generosity.  A much-abused blind girl is discovered alone in a park by a kindly black man while she strings beads for sale to an old businessman.  They become friends,  and the man becomes gradually aware of the horrible life this girl leads, under the cruel and jealous hand of her fat,  aging, prostitute mother (played with appropriately offensive gusto by Shelley Winters).  He takes her under his protection and eventually leads her to a better life.  I was going through a period of reading stories by black American writers,  particularly enjoying the stunning prose of Richard Wright in his autobiography, BLACK BOY.  This film hit me with all the full force of a train at that moment...such humanity,  such cruelty,  such kindness.  It really showed that nobody can tell where goodness can be sourced,  and how even the smallest kindness and change a person's life forever.  I still watch it occasionally in these troubled times,  to remind me that the world is still a place ripe with altruistic possibilities.

Little Big Man (1970) Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George.

Another midnight stumble.  Based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Berger and directed by Arthur Penn (who also directed BONNIE AND CLYDE),  it satirically tells the story of a white boy is taken into an Indian tribe after his parents were massacred.  Told in flashbacks related by his elderly self,  it goes up through his adventurously inept-yet-charmed life,  complete with a hilarious General Custer (Richard Mulligan), and Wild Bill Hickok (Jeff Corey).  It also scores points with me currently,  due to a recently-acquired obsession with Faye Dunaway,  who is perfectly lovely here.  I'm glad this one snuck in under my radar.  I'm not much for comedies,  especially when they're quite this silly...especially the odd performance of Chief Dan George.  It's really a very well-told and charming telling of a period in the American west,  and I remember being inspired to travel and be open to adventures after I saw it.  Dustin Hoffman has been rising on my actors list recently,  with ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and KRAMER VS KRAMER...LITTLE BIG MAN was his first checkmark in the 'good' category for me.

Serpico (1973) Al Pachino.

This is a stunner of a cop film,  and, though THE GODFATHER is one of my fave films of all time,  SERPICO actually beats it.  Telling the story of a clean cop trying to stay clean in a police force infested with greed and corruption,  Pachino tears up the screen with nobility and determination.  He weathers hostility (and eventually violence) at the hands of his "fellow" cops,  and endures the damage that his steadfastness brings to his private life.  Based on a real story written by Peter Maas,  Sidney Lumet takes us into the down-and-dirty of life in 1970's New York like an atom bomb.  This is the one film that reminds me,  in the current atmosphere of crappy, glossy, unrealistic junk,  that films can be realistic.  The 70's in general are famous for this,  but I believe that SERPICO is one of the most gritty and solid of the bunch.  I couldn't admire Pachino more.  Along with a host of other fiction,  this taught me that there is great value of holding to your truth,  and that being respected is far better than being liked...which is entirely counter-intuitive in this generation of platitudinous Facebook "likers".

After writing this list,  I've gone through a lot of movie watching memories,  and I've contemplated on how much film has taught me when the writing is splendid and the rest is done with art and craft.  Movies have always been more than an entertainment for me;  it isn't a matter of 'like' or 'dislike',  or of passing (and usually arbitrary) personal taste.  Great film can be objectively good,  waiting for us to come around to what it has to teach us...I hope to stumble on to more such gems for the rest of my days!

I have to say that I don't like to review,  generally speaking,  films that have this much fame attached to them.  I figure that they've usually been beaten to death,  and what gets written is usually the same stuff that popular films usually get;  platitudes and assumed agreement.  Well,  this time I'm making an exception.  I was so patently against this film in my youth that the way I feel now is practically Born-Again"!   I look back at me thirty years ago and I wonder,  "What the heck was I thinking?".

I've been going through another of my ever-present 1970's phases,  watching all the usual suspects (THE EXCORCIST, TAXI DRIVER,  JAWS, et al.),  and have been trying to stretch my wings a bit, with the help of my FANTASTIC local library.  I saw one that I've avoided since it first came out,  the completely perfect KRAMER VS KRAMER,  and also things like the pulse-poundingly well-done ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (Dustin Hoffman incredible once more,  and Robert Redford proving that shockingly handsome actors can still be tops in the skills dept.).  So I was scraping at (what I perceived to be) the bottom of the library's collection,  and there it was.  Chinatown, from 1974.  OK...done.

hisI've never seen a post-modern "noir"-type film done with so much reality.  It was gritty,  but it also had a thoughtful sensibility and a vibrancy that most fail to provide.   I look at films like the so-so L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, where everyone is running around trying desperately to be snappy and clever,  with clothing that looks a bit like Halloween costumes,  and CHINATOWN comes off as very realistic and natural.  Oh, and the SCRIPT!  Damn.  Any private eye film named Chinatown that spends less than ten minutes of reel-time in Chinatown gets my vote!

One of the main things that originally put me off was the casting of Jack Nicholson.  I came to Jack in his later career,  After he'd sunk into the pit of self-parody,  with a very public personal life that just put me WAY off anything that he might have done.  I mean,  ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST was marginally tolerable at the time because of the subject matter and the brutally unapologetic writing (I LOVE it now),  but I had no time for his legendary snarky vibe and the ugly, over-wrought expressions.    Not here,  I'm happy so say!  Jack's "Jake" Gittes,  is dry but fiery,  a little world-weary,  but not to embarrassing excess (it's a vibe that can go so wrong, wot?),  and he seems to just sit back and observe people with a critical eye,  while rolling from one clever mess to another.  He was so good.  At a time when they were getting guys like Elliott Gould  and Wayne Rogers to do nostalgia-noir (the 70's were not generally kind to the concept of the 30's and forties in either film or music),  Jack, at that time in his career, was just the thing.  Unsentimental and jaded,  but with humanity in spades.

Faye Dunaway,  another actor who has long flown under my radar,  has become one of my new fave beauties,  while also kicking out killer performances.  In 3 DAYS OF THE CONDOR she was fan-tastic,  and in a recent watching of films like THE TOWERING INFERNO and the amazing LITTLE BIG MAN,  I'm a mystified by her lack of presence in my younger movie days.  It really could be an age thing.   I'm 48, and she really is the type of classy, mature woman that a man who has lived a little life can appreciate.  She's such a looker,  and her figure is to die for;  add prodigious acting skills and smarts,  tagged onto her natural grace,  it probably isn't a wonder than my dumb young self had no clue. As sexy as any woman in the history of women. 

About John Huston I need say little...genius needs no words.

If you haven't seen it for any reason,  including those that I've mentioned,  I commend it to you with the greatest urgency.  After all,  you may die before you do,  and I promise you that that would be a tragedy!

Since watching CHINATOWN I took the opportunity to watch the later sequel,  THE TWO JAKES.  I was really hot for that vibe,  so recently had I been blown away by Nicholson's Jake Gittes,  so  I took the unlikely shot in the proverbial that this might hold some of the magic of the original.  Sadly,  it had none of it.  Not even a little.

You know how I mentioned the  stuff about the faux-noir,  with all the phony costumes, being worn by overly popular actors trying to be Jimmy Cagney?  This had all of that in spades.  Yucko.   I mean jeez...although most of the supporting cast was actually from the original,  newbies like Madeline Stowe, and even the slightly cheesy addition of the slightly cheesy Harvey Keitel (who I generally like pretty well,  if not as well as Hollywood seems to want me to),  it just didn't have the stones to pull off what the original did.  The original was uncompromising.  It threw life in your face,  and didn't care if it broke your nose....THE TWO JAKES, on the other hand,  threw up on my shoes metaphorically,  and I really should have expected that.