Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XI

I've always thought that one of the best plots for a movie was the attempt to commit the perfect crime. Usually those movies are told more from the perspective of the criminal than the detectives. A couple of movies fitting that description are 1960's Ocean's Eleven and 1954's Dial M For Murder. I saw Ocean's Eleven when it first came out, and at the time I considered it exceptionally good. When I viewed it again two years ago it seemed the movie did not age as well as others of its vintage. Still, I gave it a B+. The movie features the infamous Brat Pack, led by Frank Sinatra, trying to rob five Las Vegas casinos simultaneously on New Year's Eve. Dial M For Murder appears on TCM once or twice a year. My initial viewing of it was also two years ago and I had to give it an A, meaning I consider it one of the forty (or so) best films I have ever seen.

All of the foregoing serves as an intro to my recommendation of the French movie from 1954, Rififi. It, too, involves an attempt to commit the perfect crime, this time by a small band of jewel thieves led by a mastermind who has recently served out a long prison sentence. Other than being a riveting tale, the movie is mostly famous for a twenty-five minute sequence (showing the execution of the heist) in which there is absolutely no dialogue or music. That piece of filmmaking by one of the all-time great directors, Jules Dassin, is one of the most famous accomplishments in cinematic history.

Without further ado, these are the movies I watched at the Quentin Estates during the first quarter of 2013.

1. Beasts Of The Southern Wild (2012 drama; Quvenzhane Wallis is a motherless six year old who lives in a Louisiana Gulf Coast shanty with her father, a guy who means well but has huge health problems mostly of his own doing) B+

2. Cool Hand Luke (1967 drama; Paul Newman serves a two year sentence on a chain gang, taking life as it comes and earning the respect of fellow prisoners, including George Kennedy) B

3. Easy Rider (1969 drama; Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper bike their way across the southland, from LA to NOLA, encountering hookers and blow along the way) C

4. Notorious (1946 drama; Ingrid Bergman loves FBI agent Cary Grant, but marries suspected Nazi sympathizer Claude Rains in Rio in an effort to find out what the Germans are plotting in Brazil) B-

5. On The Waterfront (1954 drama; Ex-pro fighter Marlon Brando is a longshoreman who falls for Eve Marie Saint, the sister of a union member who ratted out on union boss Lee J. Cobb) A

6. Rififi (1955 drama; After being released from prison, Jean Servais leads a gang of four jewel thieves in an attempt to commit the perfect crime) A-

7. She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949 western; Army cavalry captain John Wayne gets stuck escorting his commander's daughter, Joanne Dru, across post-Civil War Indian country, while two of his subordinate officers make goo goo eyes at her) B

8. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951 drama; When truth-challenged Vivien Leigh moves in with her sister Kim Hunter and brother-in-law Marlon Brando, constant turmoil results in their New Orleans duplex) A-

9. The Way (2010 drama; Martin Sheen travels to the Pyranees to claim the body of his son, then decides to make the 480 mile pilgrimage along the El Camino de Santiago on which his son perished) A-