Sunday, March 3, 2013

41-50

Ikiru (1952) Akira Kurosawa's humanist masterpiece, where an older man dying of a terminal illness finally does something with his life: build a playground in Tokyo.
Intolerance (1916) The passing of time is represented by the rocking of a cradle as we progress through four enlightening showcases of human intolerance.  Director D. W. Griffith made this to counteract his previous year's Birth of a Nation; this film is similarly long, but an uplifting anthology.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Jimmy Stewart ruins his family's credit, acts like a total jerk, and ponders suicide, before he has a change of mood from Clarence the angel, who reveals what his world would have been like without him.  Unfortunately a notorious box-office bomb, this film is the prototype of the list it's made.
Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring (1986) Gérard Depardieu plays a hunchbacked man whose neighbors seek his well's water.  Dark at times, but ultimately uplifting.
The Jungle Book (1967) "The Bare Necessities," as Baloo sings, are the things you need in life to get by.  That's just the tip of what we learn in this rollicking adventure from Disney, loosely based on the works of Rudyard Kipling.
The Kid (1921) Charlie Chaplin takes in orphan Jackie Coogan (TV's very own Uncle Fester), with results that provide plenty of pathos and a strange sense of wisdom.
The Ladykillers (1955) Ealing's acclaimed British comedy, where one bad gang is out-witted by a little old lady.  The moral, coupled with no shortage of laughs, is that "good can succeed without even trying."
The Last Laugh (1924) How to get a nice ending from a bleak tale.  In F. W. Murnau's great tragi-comedy, Emil Jannings' hotel doorman is sacked because of his age, but ultimately it is he who gets the last laugh.
Life Is Beautiful (1997) It may sound perverse to get laughs out of the Holocaust's reach in Italy, but…After Roberto Benigni's 5 year old son loses his toy tank, he promises a new one, and ultimately it's the reward for surviving a concentration camp.  Until Crouching Tiger, this was the highest-grossing movie not filmed in English.
Local Hero (1983) Likewise, this one's about a small town in Scotland that sells out to Burt Lancaster, a Big Oil CEO.  Unlike today's America, however, there's a minimum of strife and division.

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