The Screengrab : peter watkins

Screengrab's Favorite Movies About Music: Fiction Edition (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:30:00 GMT

ALMOST FAMOUS (2000)

Some people knock Cameron Crowe's fictionalized cinematic memoir for viewing the '70s through rose-colored granny glasses...but, hey, it IS told from the point-of-view of a very, very happy 15-year-old kid who not only gets to write for Rolling Stone, but also loses his virginity to a trio of sexy groupies! For me, the hero's starry-eyed wonder was the whole point: it's a rare movie that can honestly make me remember how exciting, innocent and mysterious life (and, for that matter, show biz) seemed before I became such a cranky old man. And I've always gotta give props to any Hollywood movie made with such heartfelt emotion, humanity and attention to detail...PLUS it’s got Philip Seymour Hoffman as cool-nerd Jedi Master Lester Bangs, Fairuza Balk in a well-deserved good role for a change, Kate Hudson (in her ONLY good role to date) as the embodiment of the Great Unattainable and Zooey Deschanel in a cool-ass stewardess uniform. It’s all happening!

THE COMMITMENTS (2001)

Alan Parker's once-a-decade good movie -- and now that I mention it, Alan, you're almost twenty years overdue for another one -- has a solid grounding in one of Roddy Doyle's exuberant novels about Irish life. Because Parker was able to get the milieu down right, he and his screenwriters -- Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais, and Doyle -- were able to fiddle with the book's cast of characters in order to accommodate the cast they assembled from the extensive audition process (for instance, changing the book's lead singer from a young George Michael type to a beefy lout after meeting Andrew Strong, a heavyset 16-year-old with a powerful voice) without losing its flavor. The cast also included Glen Hansard, who took to turning down subsequent offers of acting jobs so as not to distract from his music career, which would eventually yield its greatest success when he returned to the movies for 1996's Once.

GREENDALE (2003)

Neil Young has been dabbling with filmmaking since at least 1974's Journey Through the Past, but this companion piece to his album of the same name is his best work as a director. Like many artists who basically play around at making movies when they're taking a break from their real work, Young's work in film is amateurish, but the amateurism here is playful and lively, and it expands on the story and ideas of the ten-song cycle of the album, which is perfectly achieved but also a little cut and dried. The story involves three generations of Greens: Grandpa, who sits on the porch all day thinking sadly about how the world has gone to hell; his used-up son Earl, who winds up in a jail cell; and young Sun Green, who preaches rebellion and freaks out the military-industrial complex armed with a megaphone and some killer tats. Even after all the changes Young has been through, the hippie dream dies hard.

AMERICAN HOT WAX (1978)

When rock and roll was young and frisky, exploitation filmmakers threw together movies in which kids celebrated the new music with the help of actual music stars who stopped by to perform a number for a quick buck. This movie, directed by Floyd Mutrux, functions simultaneously as a parody of those movies and a fantasy of what it would have been like if someone had gotten one of them right. The terrific, late character actor Tim McIntire greased back his thinning hair and donned a succession of eye-abrasive sports coats to play the legendary disc jockey Alan Freed, who popularized rock and roll until he was destroyed in the payola scandal. (Freed himself was a mainstay of early rock movies, like Rock Around the Clock and Mr. Rock and Roll.) McIntire plays him as sweaty, medium-rung show business hustler who plays the role of Prometheus to the kids and comes to love it so much that he turns into a real hero in spite of himself. The cast also includes Laraine Newman as a character based on the young Carole King, the still-human Jay Leno and Fran Drescher, the child actor Moosie Drier as the head of the Buddy Holly Fan Club, and as themselves, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and Frankie Ford. The whole thing builds to the big rock show, where the forces of repression, horrified at the sight of interracial dancing in the aisles, orders the house lights turned on while Jerry Lee Lewis is onstage pumping out "Great Balls of Fire", inspiring the indignant Killer to complain, "Folks, it's mighty hard to do a rock and roll show with the lights on. Can't do it! Now, the police are over there doin' their job, Alan Freed's doin' his job, let Jerry Lee Lewis do his job and turn the damn lights off!" It is said that Abraham Lincoln sometimes reached comparable peaks of oratory, but there is no filmed record to confirm this.

PRIVILEGE (1967)

Filmmaker and media critic Peter Watkins trained his camera on rock'n'roll culture with the 1967 film Privilege, which examined the circus that sprung up around the (fictional) pop star Steven Shorter. Shorter is a worldwide musical phenomenon, and so rabid is his fan base that when Shorter stages a musical number in which he gets beaten and thrown into jail by police, an actual riot breaks out. In short, Steven's fans will follow him anywhere -- he endorses dozens of products Oprah-style, and when British farmers experience a surplus of apples, guess who they get for an advertising spot? As played by then-Manfred Mann lead singer Paul Jones (excellent in his big-screen debut), Shorter is a magnetic performer, but in the end, Watkins is more interested in him as a media commodity. The Steven Shorter we see in Privilege is less a three-dimensional person than a commodity, and indeed he seems to have little discernible personality when he's not onstage -- how ironic that Shorter's fans claim to love their idol "because he gives so freely of himself." In the end, Shorter is little more than a pure media image, as easily manipulated as any other, to the point where the establishment powers of the government and the Church of England can put Steven in front of a stadium full of fans and motivate them to chant "We will conform!" Privilege is the polar opposite of a rockin' good time -- it's a stark head trip in which even the most ruggedly individualistic of art forms can be co-opted and corrupted by the powers that be, and in which the populist media don't so much create stars as consume them and crap them back out when they're no longer needed.

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

DVD Digest for July 29, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

As we get ready to tear into the dog days of summer, this week brings a number of great new DVDs to help you beat the heat.

DVDs of the Week: In a banner week for culty fare, I would like to spotlight two especially noteworthy new DVD releases. First is the long-awaited release of Alex Proyas’ director’s cut of Dark City (Warner, also Blu-Ray). A flop on its original release, Dark City has in the intervening years become something of a cult film, its critical reputation salvaged in part by the ongoing support of Roger Ebert, who memorably chose it as his #1 film of 1998. With this director’s cut, Proyas has added more than ten minutes of footage to an already compelling original, in addition to making other noticeable changes (not least, dropping the introductory voiceover that was present in the theatrical cut). In addition to the original disc’s commentaries by the filmmakers and Ebert, the new edition includes two new featurettes, a review of the film by Neil Gaiman, and a number of other features. Most double-dips and “director’s cuts” are largely marketing department bluster, but Dark City should prove to be worth the upgrade.

My other pick this week is Peter Watkins’ Privilege (New Yorker), a movie which as some of you might recall I loved so much I kind of want to marry it. At the time I originally saw the film, I had no inkling that it would be released on DVD, as for years it had been unavailable in any home-viewing format, and was only available to theatrical venues in a single print. So if you’ve been waiting eagerly to see Privilege- and Lord knows you should have been- your day has finally arrived. New Yorker’s DVD is light on special features, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. That it’s available is cause enough for celebration, and should lead to the film becoming the cult classic it so richly deserves to be.

Other classics coming this week to DVD include the Tyrone Power Matinee Idol Collection (Fox, includes 10 feature films) and WarGames: 25th Anniversary Edition (MGM).

As for recent releases, you know it’s a good week when the release of a Martin Scorsese film on DVD isn’t the biggest story. Nevertheless, it’s still nice to have Scorsese’s Stones doc Shine a Light (Paramount, also Blu-Ray) available, even if it can’t match the spectacle of seeing the film in IMAX. Other recent releases coming to DVD include: the stoner sequel Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (New Line, also Blu-Ray); Owen Wilson in Drillbit Taylor (Universal, also Blu-Ray); the famously Oscar-snubbed Israeli crowdpleaser The Band’s Visit (Sony); Doug Pray’s documentary Surfwise (Magnolia); the year’s non-Mamet MMA drama Never Back Down (Summit); the postapocalyptic actioner Doomsday (Universal, also Blu-Ray). Also, three direct-to-DVD sequels: Lost Boys: The Tribe (Warner, also Blu-Ray), WarGames: The Dead Code (MGM), and Stargate: Continuum (MGM, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s TV on DVD releases include: Centennial: The Complete Series (Universal); Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 7 (Universal); and Witchblade: The Complete Series (Warner). This week also brings the release of Masters of Horror Season 2 (Anchor Bay), and while many of the installments are of dubious quality, at least the box set can boast this week’s coolest packaging.

Finally, Blu-Ray only releases this week include the Paramount’s Jack Ryan tetralogy of The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and The Sum of All Fears. Also of note: Beowulf: The Director’s Cut (Paramount); Top Gun (Paramount); The Lost Boys (Warner); and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (New Line).

Reviews By Request: The Atomic Cafe (1982, Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty)

Paul Clark — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Thanks to reader Jason Alley for requesting this week’s review. As always, for instructions on how to request the next review for this feature (to run in two weeks) see the bottom of this post.

One of the most fascinating aspects of American history during the 1950s was the way the image of wholesome innocence was juxtaposed with perhaps the greatest sustained wave of fear our country has ever felt- the fear of nuclear annihilation. Of course, the two were hardly mutually exclusive- it was partly the paranoia that was sweeping the country at the time that kept all “good law-abiding Americans” on the straight and narrow path, lest they draw undue attention. This contrast between the white-bread face of fifties America and the tangible threat of the Bomb is but one notable aspect of the documentary The Atomic Café, but it’s probably the one that registered with me most strongly.

When regular Screengrab reader Jason Alley recommended The Atomic Café for this week’s Reviews By Request, I was expecting something more kitschy. The film's poster and the synopsis on IMDb suggested something along the lines of the documentary Hell’s Highway, which took a wink-wink look back at those cheeseball highway safety movies many of us were made to suffer through in Driver’s Ed. But while some of the helpful hints offered by the atomic bomb-themed classroom films seen in The Atomic Café sound pretty risible in retrospect, the film is deadly serious not just about the horror of potential nuclear war, but about how little we really knew about it back then.

Rather than a haphazard montage of old educational films and newsreel footage, Atomic Café directors Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, and Pierce Rafferty structure the film as a chronological history of the building nuclear threat, told entirely through “found footage.” It’s this structure that’s key to the movie’s effect. A looser film might draw attention to the individual bits themselves, possibly drawing the same sort of knowing laughter that is often afforded misguided cautionary relics of yore (e.g. Reefer Madness). Instead, the chronology of the film allows the information to have a cumulative effect, as we approach the mindset of the shorts based on what the film has already shown us.

Consider how the film begins with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The footage that follows focuses largely on the American idea that these bombings brought about the end of World War II (there’s even a newsreel entitled ”Peace: Isn’t It Wonderful?”). But while this might have indeed been the case, the footage from Japan tells a different story- charred corpses, mangled bodies, buildings leveled to the ground. As we see an aerial view of a bombed city, the filmmakers play an old American radio show in the background, with the hosts joking that the city looks “like Ebbets Field after a Giants doubleheader.”

But it wasn’t a joke anymore when the Soviets got their own Bomb. Anti-Communist fervor consumed our government, the Rosenbergs were executed, and we began preparing for the worst. Yet strangely enough, American newsreels and educational films actually downplayed the potential destruction a Soviet attack could cause. Bert the Turtle tells children to “duck and cover,” grade schoolers stock up on canned goods, and families build fallout shelters in the basements. All the while, those in the know suggest that these preparations might not be nearly enough to protect us, and wouldn’t even function as a deterrent.

All the while, the Raffertys and Loader use nothing but pre-existing audio and film, but they nonetheless make their points in no uncertain terms. This is especially true of the film’s final montage, when the film intercuts declassified films of actual nuclear tests with shots of people reacting to hypothetic blasts in educational films. As we see children crawling under their desks and adults covering themselves with picnic blankets, it’s hard not to marvel at how ill-prepared we really were for the possibility of nuclear war. How lucky for everyone that we never got to that point.

Small touches linger in the mind. An Army film showing soldiers participating in radiation experiments. An announcer interrupting a monologue about the Communist threat to plug two local shopping centers as bastions of “glorious capitalism.” A single shot of a Japanese man used twice, once in the lead-in to the footage of the Hiroshima bombing, and again in the final montage- perhaps as a way of musing how little good ducking and covering would have done him. Newsreel footage of a Wisconsin town simulating a “Communist invasion.” Then-Vice President Nixon proclaiming mental health to be “the single most important issue facing Americans today.” A priest insistently preaching the need to keep extra people out of your fallout shelter, by using force if necessary.

Watching The Atomic Café, I thought back to Peter Watkins’ masterpiece The War Game, which imagined the aftermath of a nuclear blast on an ill-prepared society. But while The Atomic Café lacks the gut-punch terror of Watkins’ film, its specificity and comprehensive recreation of the mindset of the period makes it worthy of being mentioned in the same breath, and that’s no mean feat.

So, what movie would you like me to review for the next installment of Reviews by Request? Let me know in the comments section below. To refresh your memory, here are the rules for requesting a movie to be reviewed: (1) it has to be a movie I haven’t seen, (2) it has to be available through Netflix, and (3) please only request one film. Other than that, anything is fair game. First to suggest a movie that qualifies gets their requested review. See you in two weeks!

EW Makes Great-Movies List; Screengrab Points, Laughs

Paul Clark — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

With last week blessedly free of celebrities getting knocked up and/or being caught without underwear, Entertainment Weekly has seized upon this fallow period in entertainment news to unveil yet another list for your perusal. In this week’s double issue, EW’s writing staff unveiled their lists of “The New Classics” in a number of media, including their top 100 movies of the last quarter century. There were a few pleasant surprises- like #4 pick Blue Velvet making its second prominent appearance on a high-profile list in less than a week (after the latest AFI special)- and you can't really argue with Pulp Fiction at #1, but many of the choices left something to be desired. Put it another way- if you know both jack and shit about cinema, EW’s list is bound to feel pretty unsatisfactory, with a whopping six foreign-language films and two documentaries out of 100.

Of course, the makers of such lists are always prone to stating that their goal is to “stir up debate.” So in the proud Screengrab tradition of speaking truth (or at least strongly-worded fibs) to power, I’d like to go on record to state that a number of masterpieces of the past 25 years were ignominiously robbed in order to make way for the likes of Pretty Woman. On top of that, a few of the movies that made the list were so unceremoniously- and undeservingly- buried near the bottom that their inclusion is arguably even more of a disgrace when you consider the titles that outrank them. In keeping with EW’s format, I’ve kept the artsy-fartsy to a minimum- no shorts, no avant-garde, no mentions of Peter Watkins. Instead I’ve selected five pretty accessible movies (including a foreign-language pick) and one classic that deserved far better than EW wanted to give it.

But first, a note to EW’s webmaster: your online feature on the 26 greatest movie posters doesn’t want to scroll over to the poster for The Limey. Please fix this immediately. Thank you.

Now, my alternate selections, in no particular order:

The New World- to my eyes, the finest American film of the last 25 years. Should have qualified just by being one of the most beautiful films ever made, but there’s more to Terence Malick’s masterpiece than gorgeous cinematography and panoramic shots of nature. Malick’s re-creation of the founding of Virginia and the resulting “settlement” of the land is always completely convincing, transporting the viewer into the lifestyle (and mindsets) of the time in a way few period pieces can manage. But it’s also a heartrending love story of a particularly mature kind, as Pocahontas (the glowing Q’Orianka Kilcher) must learn to let go of her childish love in order to find sustainable happiness with another. The New World is a marvel, and I expect that we’ll be seeing it on plenty of lists in the decades to come.

Naked- Now, I can kind of understand leaving Malick off your list, since the guy’s only made two movies during the eligible period. But what’s your excuse when it comes to Mike Leigh? Even the Academy has caught on to Leigh’s greatness- witness the bevy of nominations for Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy and Vera Drake- but for my money his best work to date is still Naked. Of course, it’s something of a bitter pill to swallow, with an almost painfully bleak view of human nature. And in the middle of it all is David Thewlis, giving one of the all-time great performances, as the compulsively verbal misanthrope Johnny, the kind of bastard whose sole redeeming virtue is that he knows exactly how much of a bastard he is. Thewlis owns the film, creating from the ground up a character so fascinating that we can’t help but watch him, mouth often agape, up through the film’s magnificent final shot.

Heavenly Creatures- Hey EW, you know that Peter Jackson guy? The one whose most famous films you’ve placed prominently at #2? Well, he did make movies before Lord of the Rings, and in its way Heavenly Creatures is just as good if not better. Beginning with a true-crime story that would in other hands have lent itself to sensationalism- teenage lesbian murderers!- Jackson instead crafted in alternately invigorating and harrowing movies about the seductiveness, and the dangers, of fantasy. As Pauline and Juliet (Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, in their breakthrough roles) grow ever more attached to their King-Arthur-meets-Ayn-Rand fairy tale land, they increasingly feel compelled to defend it against the encroachment of the everyday world, until the story commences in a sudden, shocking act of violence that sends these killer angels crashing back to Earth forever.

Once Upon a Time in America- Once again, Sergio Leone’s final masterwork is the odd man out among gangster dramas, with the EW writers forwarding the unfortunate notion that the genre began with The Godfather and ended with GoodFellas, with a brief stopover in Scarface Land. Leone’s film may not have the iconic status of Coppola, the seductiveness of Scorsese, or the gangsta cachet of DePalma, but as a cinematic achievement, it deserves respect, at least in its 227-minute long version. As a minor-key elegy for a crime culture that has long since passed, Once Upon a Time in America mops the floor with The Godfather, Part III, with as many classic moments as any film in Leone’s oeuvre. You’ll never look at a garbage truck the same way again.

Three Colors Trilogy- I debated including Decalogue on this list but decided against it because it premiered on television. But I had no such problem with Kieslowski’s trilogy, a wholly unique- yet entirely approachable- grand work in three parts. In telling three intimate stories, Kieslowski manages to capture a specific end-of-the-millennium worldview, as well as some surprising insights into human nature in general. But the film’s true power comes from their simplicity- Kieslowski tells us everything we need to know about these people and their lives, if only we know where (and how) to look. Beyond that, they’re just ravishing cinema, with the scores of Zbigniew Preisner ranking among the greatest ever written for the screen.

And finally…

Back to the Future- #91? Really? Working from perhaps the tightest and cleverest screenplay ever made into a Hollywood blockbuster, Robert Zemeckis and company turned what was essentially a comedic take on Americana into a genuine piece of Americana itself. How many movies of the past quarter century are this widely seen, or so beloved by all sectors of the moviegoing audience? Back to the Future is a textbook case of all the pieces lining up just so, as well as a testament to how wonderful a big-budget movie when the filmmakers trust their assembled elements enough to stay out of their own damn way. But hey, if you guys really think Shrek, Gladiator, Speed, Fatal Attraction, Scream, Beverly Hills Cop, Dirty Dancing (?!?!?), Out of Africa, and Napoleon Dynamite are all better than Back to the Future, I guess I don’t have anything left to say to you.

Take Five: 1968

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Brett Morgen's highly praised documentary Chicago 10, about the fallout of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago forty years ago opens in limited release this weekend. Morgen has claimed since it first debuted last year at Sundance that the film isn't really about 1968, but about 2008, and indeed, it seems to have fresh, albeit grim, resonance today, with the recent death of arch-conservative William F. Buckley, who had a memorable confrontation on the air while covering the convention. Steven Spielberg is himself crafting a fictionalized version of the same events for The Trial of the Chicago 7, and America gears up for one of the most electrifying presidential races in recent memory as an unpopular war rages overseas and tumult grips some of our closest allies. But as relevant as it might seem from a moviemaking perspective, in other ways, 1968 couldn't be further away; the revolutionary consciousness of that bloody year and the infinite possibilites that came with the Paris revolts seem like they happened on another planet. Still, in many ways, it was a magical year that casts a very long shadow over the lives of a number of people, many of whom are filmmakers. Here's a look at some of the better films about or influenced by that impossible year.

MEDIUM COOL (1969)

In many ways, the definitive film about the events of 1968, at least from an American perspective, will always be Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool. The first nondocumentary feature film directed by the legendary cinematographer was meant to be a highly fictionalized treatment of chaos and mayhem breaking out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; but it quickly transmogrified into something altogether stranger, blurring the line between truth and fiction, as reality quickly began to outstrip Wexler's fictionalized vision. Eventually, while filming, he found himself caught up in the (unstaged) action of the riots and police brutality that wracked the city and altered the political landscape of America, and one of his crew uttered the immortal warning: "Look out, Haskell! It's real!" (This later became the title of a very worthwhile 2001 documentary about the movie.)

PUNISHMENT PARK (1971)

Though it was neither filmed in nor set in 1968, one of the most famous — or infamous — of Peter Watkins' inventive pseudo-documentaries is completely suffused with the spirit of the times. The director himself has admitted to being highly galvanized by the events of that year, both in the United States and in Europe, and some of the nonprofessional actors he recruited to play roles in the film were participants in the Chicago riots. The film itself concerns a grueling trek through the desert by a handful of dissidents, escorted by a grim-faced group of soldiers in some sort of vicious game. It quickly degenerates into a terrifying realistic showdown between the forces of law and order and the voices of revolution and dissent; its creepy verisimilitude serves to remind us that maybe those days aren't as long past as we'd like to think.

IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI (1978)

Guy Debord, provocateur, poet, philosopher and filmmaker, was one of the key members of the Situationist International, and as such, one of the hidden architects of the bizarre, almost miraculous events of Paris, May 1968. Made in the decade following those events, this experimental film (the title means "In the night, we turn and are consumed by the fire") puts to work his theories of detournement — of taking cultural images and repackaging them with subversive intent — in service of both celebrating and eulogizing the near-revolution. Intriguing, frustrating, brilliant and flawed, much like the man himself, In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni is a movie worth seeking out. If nothing else, you have to love the audacity of a film that features a hand-typed note from God, claiming that if he'd known that it would eventually have produced a film so offensive, he would never have created the world.

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988)

Paris and Chicago weren't the only places deeply embroiled in chaotic upheaval in the year 1968. All over the world, from Italy to Japan, protest movements, government misconduct, and a seemingly unstoppable youth movement put nations in turmoil. One of the biggest hotspots was Czechoslovakia, where Milan Kundera sets his famously erotic, tragic and beautiful novel. It sets a promiscuous young doctor at odds with his own desires and emotions on the eve of the Soviet invasion, which is used as both political and personal backdrop against a timeless human story. Ably directed by Philip Kaufman and beautifully acted by Juliet Binoche, Lena Olin, and in one of his first major roles, Daniel Day-Lewis, The Unbearable Lightness of Being perfectly captures the tone of the days, twenty years later on.

REGULAR LOVERS (2005)

A number of European filmmakers have attempted to capture the Spirit of '68, both in documentaries and in narrative film. It's a difficult task, if for no other reason than that the causes of the revolt, as well as its ultimate collapse, are still poorly understood and subject to the endless predatory claims of those who say it belongs, ideologically, to them. This little-seen film by French director Phillippe Garrel perhaps comes closest, simply by being so messy, ambling and chaotic; by not attempting to frame an overweening narrative structure over those dreamlike days in Paris, Garrel gives us a rather astonishing evocation of them in all their rambling, inchoate, erotic glory. He quietly succeeds where Bernardo Bertolucci's earlier, and similar, film The Dreamers noisily failed.

The Thirteen Greatest Long-Ass Movies of All Time, Part 1

Peter Smith — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

There are long movies, and there are really long movies. But there's also that notorious third category: The Long-Ass Movie. You know them. Usually they have to be split into two or three parts. Sometimes they have to be released as mini-series, with abbreviated versions put out in theaters. Occasionally they're hacked to pieces by studios and distributors, and become founts of controversy. More often that not, they're made by Germans. (We're not kidding. Check the list.) And most of the time, though sadly not always, they're great — ambitious, sprawling, uncompromising, and riveting. There's something really special about a long-ass movie, which, for our purposes, we're classifying as a film over four hours long. You never forget the experience of sitting through it. We certainly didn't. Here's our list of the Greatest Long-Ass Movies of All Time.

HAMLET (1996) Running time: 242 mins.

It's highly unlikely that anyone in Shakespeare's time actually saw Hamlet in full. As many critics and biographers have noted, the full text of The Bard's masterpiece would run over four hours if performed — a prohibitive length even today, despite such modern conveniences as lighting, electricity, and weekends. Clocking in at a limber four hours and two minutes, Kenneth Branagh's full-text version of the play struck a remarkable balance: an uncompromised performance that was also relentlessly cinematic. Some called Branagh's camera tricks show-offy, but he was simply following in the footsteps of one of the great linguistic show-offs of all time. The film's baroque visual style complemented the verbal gymnastics of Shakespeare's sweet tongue, and the result is not only the most faithful adaptation of Shakespeare ever filmed, but also, for our money, one of the absolute best.

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991) Running time: 280 mins.

Don't laugh. The two-hour, thirty-eight-minute U.S. theatrical release version of Wim Wenders's insanely ambitious sci-fi epic romance was a messy, albeit fascinating, journey through an ultra-globalized millennial world, with William Hurt and Solveig Dommartin bouncing around the planet recording with a revolutionary camera designed to help blind people see, accompanied to snippets of songs from the director's favorite rock acts (Nick Cave, R.E.M., U2, etc. — the soundtrack CD for this thing was a mainstay in many a contemporaneous college dorm room). The full, nearly-five-hour version, it turns out, wasn't nearly so messy. Rather, it was a sober, compelling, and visionary lament for the ways in which the oncoming technological transformation of society would transform human contact; Wenders's portrait of a hyper-connected world predated the Internet revolution. More importantly, it had even more of that awesome music.

1900 (1976) Running time: 315 mins.

Unjustly tarred on its initial release as a disaster, Bernardo Bertolucci's epic, a highly personal film despite its five-hour running time, has withstood the test of time far better than anyone would have expected. Its big-name cast, surprisingly, doesn't hold up particularly well — thanks to a sometimes shaky script and a not insignificant language barrier. But as an epic of great scope and a continuation of Bertolucci's tremendous visual-storytelling techniques, it's a raging success. Five hours fly by in the presence of such gorgeous filmmaking, thanks to the sensual, earthy tone of the film, the solid pacing, and the director's extreme care. Bertolucci apparently envisioned 1900 as his own response to the success of The Godfather — he would tell the modern history of Italy, just as Francis Ford Coppola had told the modern history of Italian-Americans, with a similar sense of range and scope and sweep. At the time of its release, no one would have credited Bertolucci's film as successful on that level, but if he'd had the foresight to do as Coppola did and release it as two separate films telling a single story, it's easy to imagine that 1900 would have enjoyed a much better critical reception.

NAPOLEON (1927) Running time: 330 mins.

Abel Gance was one of the towering French directors of the silent era, one of those pop-eyed geniuses whose only reservation about the movie medium was that it would be a shame if it turned out to have any boundaries at all. The massive epic that is now Gance's best-known work was originally intended to be only the first chapter in a multi-part historical epic consisting of six enormous features. You get a taste of what Gance hoped to achieve at the end of this picture, when three different projectors are used to show contrasting images on three screens, achieving something like a split screen image to the nth degree. Unfortunately, this silent landmark was completed the same year as The Jazz Singer, and Napoleon was released in America in a savagely truncated version that didn't even attempt to preserve the triple-projection imagery. Gance would continue to work, but most of his wildest ambitions would go unfunded and unfulfilled. He didn't become fully appreciated until the film historian Kevin Brownlow assembled a restored version that, with live musical accompaniment, played to ecstatic responses in packed theaters in 1980 and 1981. (Thankfully, Gance lived to see it — he died late in 1981.) That initial restoration ran five minutes short of four hours, but Brownlow kept going back, and by 2000 he had extended the film by another thirty-five minutes. It remains a thrilling mixture of audacious filmmaking, charming corn, and some very strange politics: Napoleon is so thrilled by the French Revolution that he sets out to bring democracy to other countries by invading them — evidence that the French, of all people, created the Bush Doctrine.

LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871) (2000) Running time: 345 mins.

As huge fans of Peter Watkins, we found that the number of Watkins-related items on Screengrab has been shockingly low of late, so we'll take any opportunity we can to plug his work. La Commune, his epic film about the Paris Commune of 1871, which in its full form runs five hours and forty-five minutes, is in many ways a summing-up of Watkins's career that tests the methods and techniques he'd developed over the course of more than thirty years. The Commune was a group of intellectuals, students and workers who took over a section of Paris in 1871 and formed an experimental government. True to form, Watkins took over an abandoned factory and staged the rise and fall of the "Commune" as covered and reported on by modern TV crews, who take turns interviewing the non-actors who represent the political leaders, the common people, the military forces working to smash the Commune, et al. He even tosses in a dandyish news anchor who spreads anti-Commune sentiment on a competing network, "Versailles TV." Ever the iconoclast, Watkins refuses to consign the fervor of Communards to the distant past, and by doing so he celebrates the revolutionary spirit both past and present, as when a discussion between the characters gives way to a contemporary debate about globalization. It may be the crowning achievement of one of the strangest film artists of his time — a man who sees himself as trying to bring history alive in order to educate the masses, but who has no apparent ability to make films in a way that might entice the masses to want to see them.

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

Free at Last: Peter Watkins' Privilege

Peter Smith — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Earlier this year, there was a swell of interest brought on by a handful of big-screen bookings of Peter Watkins' long-unavailable masterpiece Privilege. But while these screenings were of great interest to those lucky enough to attend, there appeared to be little hope for the majority of cinephiles to finally see the film. Now it appears the wait is finally over, as Watkins' own site reports that a DVD release is on the horizon:

"After a long period of uncertainty, Universal Pictures have finally agreed to allow [Watkins' representative] Oliver Groom to release the film as a DVD in North America. I can't say when it will be ready, but hopefully within the next six months or so. This is excellent news, of course, as this film has generally been unavailable since the early 1970s."

Excellent news indeed. No official date has been announced, but being the diligent Watkins fan I am, I'll report to you with more details as soon as I hear anything. Personally, I'd recommend that you approach the movie knowing as little as possible. But if you absolutely can't wait, check out my review of the film from April, or whet your appetite by listening to Track 7 off the Patti Smith Group's album Easter, a version of which figures prominently in the movie's opening concert scene. — Paul Clark