Every year at Butt Numb-a-Thon, Harry Knowles celebrates his birthday by gathering around 200 of his closest friends and a few lucky hangers-on and shows them 24 (or more) hours of movies, new and old, that he loves and wants to love.
Typically, the movies are a pretty even haul of new and vintage.
This year, though, there were just too many super-cool movies coming out to choose from. So, Harry decided to get back to the basics.
We still got found new films, but the rest were all classics.
Here are the best of the eleven films.
MAMA (2013)
Directed by Andres Muschietti
Written by Neil Cross/Andres Muschietti/Barbara Muschietti
Guillermo del Toro very rarely disappoints. Whether he’s directing or producing, his films are always at least entertaining. At their best, though, they are thought-provoking masterpieces.
Mama was written and directed by young filmmakers that del Toro is taking under his wing. He saw their short film of the same name and helped them expand it to feature-length. In the process, they made one creepy film about two young girls who were abandoned in the woods.
Some…thing…helped them survive.
Great acting from the two little leads and one creepy-ass story make this the best new film of the day.
Considering the next film, that’s saying a lot.
THE HOBBIT (2012)
Directed by Peter Jackson
Written by Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh/Philippa Boyens
Based on a book by JRR Tolkien
Peter Jackson has become one of my favorite filmmakers lately. Every film he’s made is great in its own way. (Except Meet The Feebles. The less said about that one, the better.)
His Lord Of The Rings films make up quite possibly the greatest trilogy of all time.
Only the original Star Wars trilogy can even compare. Which is why it pains me to say that, while this first installment of The Hobbit was a very good film and was certainly one of the best of the day, it is not as good as the LOTR films. It’s a bit too long and I just couldn’t quite get into 12 of the 13 Dwarfs.
Also, the film was shot in 48 frames per second and it makes the effects look weirdly cheap…as if the film was shot on Alec Baldwin’s models from Beetlejuice.
All that being said, the film is still VERY fun and absolutely worth watching, owning and loving. The source material isn’t as deep as LOTR, so it’s hard to make the movie as deep. That doesn’t stop it from being great.
WHITE HEAT (1949)
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Ivan Goff/Ben Roberts
Suggested by a story by Virginia Kellogg
And now for the old movies.
James Cagney was known for two things: dancin’ and killin’. I haven’t seen a lot of his films, but the ones I have seen tend to be the dancin’ movies…strangely enough, since I’m not a HUGE musical fan and I love gangster movies.
White Heat is one of his best gangster films, which makes it one of the best gangster films ever made. Cagney plays Cody Jarrett, a bloodthirsty gang leader who loves his mother…maybe a bit too much.
And she’s almost as ruthless as he is.
The guy’s amazing in this iconic role. You’ll never forget the “Top Of The World” ending.
See it now. See it often.
BROADWAY MELODY OF 1940 (1940)
Directed by Norman Taurog
Written by Leon Gordon/George Oppenheimer/Jack McGowan/Dore Schary
Uncredited writers: Walter DeLeon/Vincent Lawrence/Albert Mannheimer/Eddie Moran/Thomas Phipps/Sid Silvers/Preston Sturges
Getting back to musicals, this one stars Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell and George Murphy as hoofers on the Great White Way.
Astaire and Murphy are old buddies who are trying their best to make it in the dancing world, but they’re stuck in low-rent shows. Fred unknowingly gets a big break and gives George’s name. George meets huge star Eleanor and falls in a selfish sort of love. Fred is already in love with Eleanor from afar.
All along the way, there is great Cole Porter music and amazing tap dance numbers.
In fact, Begin The Beguine is supposed to be the best tap dance sequence ever filmed. There’s also a lot of witty banter between the three principles that shows off the presence of Preston Sturges. I don’t know how much he was involved, but I think it might have been enough to make this movie great.
Suddenly, I want to see more Fred Astaire movies, something I’ve never been all that into before.
LIBELED LADY (1936)
Directed by Jack Conway
Written by Maurine Watkins/Howard Emmett Rogers/George Oppenheimer
Based on a story by Wallace Sullivan
Speaking of witty banter, this film is FULL of it.
One of the great semi-lost screwball comedies, it stars William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow. Tracy is a newspaperman whose paper is being sued for libel by Loy’s family. He hires Powell to make the libelous statement come true. To do this, Powell has to marry Tracy’s fiancée (Harlow) and have her catch him with Loy.
It seems like a long way to go to make someone drop a lawsuit, but that doesn’t matter.
The wit flies fast and furious and these four actors work so well with each other that I wish that all four of them had made more films together. Of course, Powell and Loy made PLENTY of movies together, including the great Thin Man series.
