Filmically Perfect

Anthony Mann took an aging genre, the western, and an aging star, James Stewart, and turned them both around in Winchester ’73. This film began a partnership that lasted for several years and several marvelous, gritty films. Mann also populates this film (as well as his other westerns) with a fascinating array of players from the amazingly saucy Shelley Winters to the psychotic, giggling Dan Duryea, here giving Richard Widmark a run for his money!

Pat O’Brien as a priest, James Cagney as a murderous hood, and Humphrey Bogart as a sleazy lawyer? How can you go wrong? Lay it all in the extremely capable hands of Warners’ go-to guy, Michael Curtiz, and you’ve got one fine movie! Whaddaya say?

What a better choice for Friday the 13th than Stanley Kubrick acidic comedy about the destruction of our world via Nuclear Holocaust? With an absolutely stellar cast, including great folks like Keenan Wynn and James Earl Jones in small roles, Kubrick just couldn’t go wrong.

And so we complete our second season of Filmically Perfect and, as Vera Lynn sings over the blossoming mushroom clouds, “We’ll meet again!”

STAY TUNED!

The first and best--often imitated never equalled--even by its creators! Join us as we reminisce about one of THE summer movies!

Orson Welles--twenty-five years old--comes to Hollywood and makes this film. Amazing.

Philip Kaufman’s EPIC filming of Tom Wolfe’s book about the Mercury Space Program is not only a PERFECT MOVIE, but arguably one of the best films of the 1980s! A funny, exciting, touching, important story of bravery, foolishness, love, barbeque, and all things human. A grand portrait of seven brave men and the new world they blazed their trail into!

From that fateful day in 1975, when Film Guy Geo. Willeman got his Super 8mm print of Metropolis, it was a given that this film would be part of our Perfect Movie List. Sure, the story is fairly corny and some of the acting is heavy on the ham, but truly, there is nothing else quite like it. And now, thanks to our friends at Transit-Film, The F.W. Murnau Foundation and Kino Video, we can all enjoy this film in a beautiful new version.

Denis Sanders created the perfect Elvis Time Capsule with his 1970 film Elvis: That’s The Way It Is. Elvis fan or no, one cannot deny the power and influence this fellow from Memphis had on the world of popular music. Here we see him at the top of his newly regained powers, finally free of the crapulous films he had been making in the years preceding. Find the ORIGINAL version and revel in it!

After returning from exile to his native Spain, director Luis Buñuel made one his greatest and most controversial films--Viridiana. After its release, he found himself back on the slow boat to Churubusco, Mexico, where he made this very surreal and angry film, no doubt venting his cinematic spleen towards his Spanish foes.

Harsh--gritty--dark--and that’s just the opening credits!! Martin Scorsese’s unflinching portrait of boxer Jake LaMotta won the “Best Picture” award for 1980 and retains all of its power more than twenty-five years later. It also introduced us to two great actors: Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty!