Nothing else to say
In the 1938 film biographical drama Boys Town, we learned how Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) set up an orphanage for young boys, living by the code that there was “no such thing as a bad boy”.
If only he had met young Antoine Doinel, the subject of The 400 Blows.
Let me set the scene:
In the second week or so of returning from winter break in January of 2002, my middle school was having auditions for the upcoming musical, Bugsy Malone Jr. As each of my peers got up and nearly all individually sang “God Bless America” (as it had only been a few months since the 9/11 attacks), I sat in my chair, aware I had a different song planned.
In a perfect world, Do the Right Thing is a movie that should not exist.
The ideal world would be without the things demonstrated in the film: anger, prejudice, racism. Yet that is the world we live in, and have before the late 80s and still to this day. The list of names belonging to lives lost due to racial injustice is far to the point of many of them being forgotten by all who did not know them. This is why Spike Lee’s uncanny piece of art will almost always be a film that will resonate with any generation.
As we reach our teen years, world events start to play a bigger part in our lives in the classroom.
When I entered middle school back in 2000 (!), more people were talking about the election, only to be followed a year later by the 9/11 attacks. I can only imagine what the talks will be like with young people now regarding the COVID-19 pandemic (especially those like my brother Jackson who are in the graduating class of 2020). These were evident in my mind as I was watching Louis Malle’s Au Revoir les Enfants, a reflection of his own childhood during World War II in France.
In just under two months of being quarantined due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have found many ways of passing the time, and technology has certainly helped with that.
That is one of the main reasons why a story like Rear Window would not be able to be told today. There would be too much else for a protagonist to do in order to combat the boredom.
When revisiting the library of Disney/Pixar, one gets the same sensation when going to the dessert table. Everything (for the most part) looks delicious, and there are only a few that do not agree with your palette.
Of course, there are the favorites that you dive into and that most everyone says are the best (i.e., Finding Nemo, the Toy Story films, The Incredibles), as well as others that, while sweet, don’t offer anything completely new (like the more recent disappointing Onward). Then, of course, there are those that hit you to your inner core.
Even the most casual of filmgoers have, in some way, shape, or form, heard of the name Akira Kurosawa.
The legendary filmmaker is still felt today in films both domestically and globally, having inspired people such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (shown here giving Kurosawa an Honorary Oscar). Of his films, Seven Samurai has got to be his most influential: it has been the inspiration for films ranging from The Magnificent Seven (the original and the remake) to Disney/Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. While I am still trying to work through his filmography (thank you Criterion Channel), I would argue the most moving film of his would be what he made two years prior to Samurai: Ikiru (which, translated, means “To live”).
Over time, many a movie made for children (or anyone, for that matter) are going to be forgotten, sought after only by die hard fans and film buffs. There are movies of my own childhood that I have seen many times, yet now are known only to a few of my generation. This is even true with the powerhouse of Disney.
Had it not been for Disney Plus, certain films of lesser popularity like Oliver & Company (1988), Meet the Robinsons (2007), The Black Cauldron (1985), Robin Hood (1973), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), A Goofy Movie (1995), and The Princess and the Frog (2009) would be almost swept under the rug, especially when compared to other monolith films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), Bambi (1942), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994), just to name a few (not to mention the Pixar ones).
“The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen”.
The line of dialogue from John Anderton is also his core belief, and one of the many lines of dialogue that has stuck with me for the countless times I have seen Minority Report (2002) over the years. It is a film that asks you to think long after, but not to a degree that certain films (especially science fiction) would make some viewers need to take a Tylenol. That, and it is as engaging as any film that has come out in the first two decades of the 21st century.
In the 1910s, the world was introduced to Chaplin’s tramp, who would go on to be possibly the first recognizable character the film world ever knew.
Starring in numerous amounts of shorts, Chaplin later made full length movies with his famous mustached character: So famous, even Adolf Hitler (who was only four days younger than Chaplin) was said to have based his mustache off of the tramp.
Nothing else to say