Okay, so halfway through the list. I was going to say we have our first Best Film Oscar winner, but that’s not true, as Unforgiven was in part 1.

49. Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) (Tomas Alfredson, 2008, Sweden)

Oskar is a lonely and bullied kid. He fantasizes about getting back at his tormentors. When a young girl moves next door with an older man, Oskar begins a very awkward courting. Eli, the girl, is not receptive at first, but is also lonely, so she eventually accepts Oskar into her life. The problem is that she happens to be vampire and the older man is her caretaker, who feeds her with the blood of people he kills. When he is caught (and disfigures himself with acid), Eli is left to fend for herself, except that the pair of kids form a somewhat symbiotic relationship.

Well, is Eli a girl? She is old in years, but not in her looks and gendering young children is a surprisingly new phenomenon. Everyone was a girl early in their lives, although males were often clad in pink and females in blue. At one point Oskar asks Eli to be his girlfriend and she states that she is not a girl. Is this a reference to her real age or her being a vampire? Or is there something else going on? There’s a quick shot of her groin area, which shows a scar, so it is possible that she was castrated in life before her current state.

I’m still using feminine pronouns here, because this is left somewhat ambiguous. Apparently, the book this is based on makes it clear that Eli is in fact a male. Both were written by the same person, but as I understand it, he did take a very different approach to the story for the two media, as he should.

Eli tells Oskar that they are not so different, as she kills and Oskar wants to kill. I think that’s just a very surface level similarity. They are both isolated and it shows in their understanding of the world as well as social interactions. On the other hand, if they only have to worry about the interactions with each other, this is not a problem, as they don’t have much in the way of expectations.

One thing the American remake of the movie did not manage to capture is the Nordic bleakness. The grey suburb of Stockholm, where the movie is set, is only made even more desolate by the snow that is present everywhere. It is a fitting environment for the story. Nights are long, which is helpful, when dealing with a vampire story, and daylight is sparse. At the same time, in reality, these suburbs are very safe. They just feel dangerous because of how they look. Of course, this is partly the lighting in the movie working for it as well.

The movie itself is partly touching and partly horrific and it manages to thread the line nicely. While this is no Twilight (although I’ve never seen or read those), the movie puts the vampire into a very sympathetic position. The horror is the kids, who torment Oskar. Eli is his way out. It just happens to be the worst way possible and Oskar is essentially just giving himself up to continue the work of Eli’s former caretaker, which is a nightmare of it’s own.

48. A torinoi lo (The Turin Horse) (Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, 2011, Hungary)

A man and his adult daughter continue their lives through the apocalypse the only way they know how: Just keep doing what they are doing. The movie actually takes place over six days. What else took six days? Hint: Someone rested on the seventh.

According to Tarr, the movie started it’s life back in the 80s. In the beginning of the movie, there is a title screen with a recounting of probably apocryphal story about how Nietzsche went mad. He saw the whipping of a horse one day in Turin and it was too brutal for him to handle. The movie suggests that the horse, which our man uses is this horse and the man is the one responsible for the abuse. So, this movie is just the answer to the question of what happened to the horse after this event. Not that it would appear to take place anywhere near Turin, but that doesn’t really matter.

This is the last movie by Tarr, at least for the time being. He has since made a short and a documentary, but has stayed away from features. His wife, Ágnes Hranitzky, who had at this point being credited as the co-director on multiple occasions, has apparently retired (she is 10 years Tarr’s senior and has had a long and varied career in movies way before Tarr started his, so it’s deserved).

There’s actually a reason for this collaboration. Tarr’s style is to use extremely long takes. For example, the movie starts with an extremely long section of us just following the horse. According to Tarr, this is risky, as continuity errors would be easily seen by the audience. As she is his editor as well, he gives her some control over the takes, so that the edit can actually happen.

The movie itself is quietly devastating. Our two characters just try to maintain the simple life they have. Do they have options? Not really. Look at us. We know the world is utterly fucked, but most of us don’t do anything about it, simply expecting someone else to do something. Those that do actively do something are often completely and utterly misguided in their actions, thus exacerbating the situation. This is mostly, because certain parties are willing to let the world burn in order to make a little more money. This just captures the bleakness of those end times so magnificently.

Even simple tasks, like fetching water from the well, become meaningful, when the world is against you. That moment is actually even the centerpiece of the trailer. The two live in a small cottage on a small farm, with no animals other than the horse. They live on potatoes with salt, which they eat with their hands. This meal they get only once per day. The only luxury available is that the man drinks a small amount of alcohol every now and then.

This is slow cinema, so the movie is in no hurry at any point. It takes it’s time on every corner. It’s around 150 minutes long, but there’s only 30 shots in the whole movie, which means that the shots are 5 minutes on average. When the man first arrives with his horse at the farm, we see the whole wordless routine the two perform as they put the horse and the carriage in the stable. Neither of them speaks until we are around 20 minutes into the movie and at that point it’s only the daughter notifying the father that the food is ready.

The most obvious sign of the end times is the wind, which never stops. These circumstances have been known to drive people mad (at least colloquially). There is little music in the film, as it might drown out the wind. We do get some situations where there’s a very loud score of mostly strings bellowing atop everything else, but it doesn’t happen very much.

There is no explanation on why the two live together like this. Has the daughter been forced to live with his father, who has lost the use of his right arm, and thus couldn’t probably support himself alone? Has she been forced to take the role in maintaining the household after her mother died? Whatever the case, she is a servant to her father. He orders her around. In a way she has also lost her future ages ago. Her father is not going to live forever, so what happens to her after he is gone? This isn’t apparently much of a consideration to him. Not that it matters, when everything is falling apart anyhwo, but part of being human is planning for the future, so in a sense her humanity has been stripped from her.

47. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016, USA)

The story of a black gay man, Chiron, in three parts.

First, we have a bullied kid coming to terms with his mother’s addiction, who meets a new father figure, but relationship is complicated, as the father figure is a drug dealer. There’s also the matter of his sexuality, which he has no understanding of.

Second, Chiron is older and still a victim of bullying. His mother’s condition has worsened, while his new father figure has dies, even though he still finds a little bit of comfort from the girlfriend of that father figure. However, his school life is still hell and things conspire in a way where Chiron’s only friend first ends up giving Chiron a handjob, but ends up assaulting Chiron as a part of a hazing ritual the next day. Chiron, on his part, assaults the person behind the hazing in classroom.

We return to Chiron’s life after over a decade. He has been to prison and as it so often happens in the US, that was basically a crime school for him, and he is now a drug dealer. Except that now he has an opportunity to reconnect with the aforementioned friend.

Yeah, that was long. A lot happens in this movie. It takes a lot of turns. Most of Chiron’s life is a complete nightmare of miserable homelife, school bullying and general uncertainty. However, there are those wholesome moments, like Juan, the father figure, teaching Chiron to swim in the ocean (and this is meaningful in a way that might not be immediately obvious, as drowning is a very common cause of death for black youth, because of historical racism, which forced people of color away from swimming pools, which has meant that those people never learned the skill to pass on to their children).

I mean, if the Academy Awards wants to be actually significant and worth paying attention to, this is the kind of movie they need be giving awards in the future as well. This was just an instant classic, which even reached the Sight & Sound list at 60.

But let’s talk about the women here. There’s only two: Paula, the mother, and Teresa, the mother figure.

As previously mentioned, Paula is an addict and has turned to prostitution by the second part of the movie. Her interest in the well-being of her son is limited. We get moments of affection, but they are fleeting and feel more performative than anything else.

My immediate instinct is to judge her for this, which isn’t my usual reaction to addiction. Generally, I’m much more understanding, but here the motherhood makes it feel worse. However, my rational side tells me that we should give her the same understanding. Sure, her addiction is more damaging, because there is an additional victim, but at the same time we should also remember that judging her is not helpful. She needs help, which she is not receiving.

Then we have Teresa, who has become a mother figure to Chiron by the second part. She lets Chiron sleep at her place and even gives him money (which Paula takes away from him). She is outwardly a better person than Paula, but we also have to remember that she has been benefitting from Paula’s situation as the girlfriend of the local druglord. The money she is giving to Chiron comes from those addicts (as far as I know).

But she isn’t really the criminal here. She is just a beneficiary, who is trying to give at least a little back. Should she be allowed to hide this way from responsibility? We do often allow this for women. In a way she might have been lucky to have her boyfriend die instead of being imprisoned, because now none of the money he had made was confiscated.

I don’t really know. Part of me would like to be harder on Teresa than Paula, but this is all complicated.

This is supposed to be the feminist take, so I’m going to keep this that way: The situation Paula is in is going to be more common, if certain services, like abortions, are not available. Due to the nature of pregnancies, women are much more susceptible to ending up in these situations then men. She needs appropriate support.

46. Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, Germany)

Hauptmann (as in captain) Gerd Wiesler is a true believer in the East German state. Or he has just learned to play the game and understands exactly how paranoid he needs to be in order to thrive or even survive. He is very good at his job (which – based on what we see – is often to just find excuses to find someone guilty) and thus an important asset in his job as part of Stasi, the state security service. So, his job is to spy on people in this society, which controlled it’s populace through this extremely comprehensive and well-funded network, which had informants everywhere. They were more interested in keeping everywhere in line through fear than investigating actual crime.

However, when Wiesler is surveiling a playwright known for his loyalty, he realizes that his superior had him on this job specifically so that the superior could gain access to the playwright’s lover. At the same time, Wiesler is finding himself more and more obsessed with the pair.

While Wiesler is the main character, the playwright’s lover, Christa-Maria is in many ways in the center of the story. Besides her relationship with both the playwright and Wiesler’s superior, Wiesler also seems infatuated by her. Still, she is given very little agency.

She is a star on the stage and well-known. For the superior, this just means that she is an interesting conquest, someone to get plenty of points for, if you will.

Wiesler doesn’t really even know how to approach his feelings. He has protected himself so thoroughly, that he doesn’t really have a social life. He uses a state-provided prostitute instead, with whom he even tries to form a connection unsuccessfully. To him, Christa-Maria is unattainable for many reasons, but he still decides to do what he thinks would please her, even if she will never find out.

The playwright understands that when he decides to write a piece criticizing the East German government (actually, he is leaking statistics on suicides, which have been suppressed), he is risking Christa-Maria as well, but still decides to do it. He doesn’t even realize Christa-Maria is already quite compromised and in a situation where she has to sacrifice herself to keep him from trouble and that is still a difficult situation for her. I guess he thinks he is protecting her by keeping her out of the loop, but at the same time he should know that his actions will have repercussions for her as well in this society, where not trusting anyone is pretty much the official state philosophy. At the very least she would be detained and questioned if he was caught, and the pseudoscientific approach used to determine guilt might easily cause her to be imprisoned or worse.

It’s hard to comprehend how much control Staatssicherheit or Stasi or The Ministry of State Security, The Sword and the Shield of the State, had. They had 90,000 people working for them with about a double that in various other collaborators in a country of 18 million people. Well, they started with 18 million in 1950, but by the time Germany’s reunited in 1990, that number had fallen to 16 million, mostly because of people escaping the country, which in itself fueled the Stasi. They kept records on roughly one third of the population. Considering some of the population was children or elderly, the number of people being watched was a huge portion of the population.

I guess these days we are still surveilled, but that nature of that surveillance has changed drastically.

45. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015, Australia)

In a post-apocalyptic world, Furiosa, the Imperator for Immortan Joe, a local warlord, decides to free Joe’s concubines. A pursuit ensues with Furiosa and her women trying to reach the paradise Furiosa remembers from her childhood. Oh yeah, there’s some guy called Max around as well.

This is the greatest action movie of modern times. This isn’t the highest placed action movie on this list, but this is the culmination of the form. It’s actually kind of funny how George Miller had stopped doing action films for a while, moving on to the completely opposite of those with movies like Babe: Pig in the City and both Happy Feet movies. Then he looked at the state of action films in general and just decided to show the youngsters how it’s done. At 70, mind you.

Everything just works from the weirdly diegenic soundtrack (Joe has someone playing an electric guitar within his group, although this isn’t just a stylistic choice, he is there also for communication purposes, as they need to disseminate orders somehow), to the way too dangerous stunts to the excellent plants and payoffs within the story and for the characters. Perhaps most of all, I love how they explain the world, which is basically they don’t. They just assume we understand when they shout weird things like “Witness me!” for example.

In the context of our theme, the interesting part is the society Joe has built for himself. Besides the huddled masses, who he keeps weak by limiting the amount of water they receive, he has his warboys and his concubines. So, both genders are oppressed, just in different ways.

Warboys are a cult of personality, who worship Joe and have been conditioned to find a glorious death in the name of Joe. They have their own way of speaking, which nicely highlights their cult-like tendencies. They have nominally more freedom than the women, but the peer-pressure keeps them in line.

The women, on the other hand, are kept locked away. Sure, their quarters are great, but they are kept there as the personal harem of Joe. The locked doors are probably there partly to protect them from outsiders, but the women don’t see it that way. They aren’t brainwashed in a way similar to the warboys, but apparently at least one of them is in a Stockholm syndrome situation (although, according to some professionals, Stockholm syndrome doesn’t actually exist, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it in fiction). The main reason the women are kept separate from everyone else is that Joe wants babies and certain women have been chosen for this purpose for their health, which manifests itself as beauty. At least in this case. (There is actually another group of women, who are there only to produce milk.)

In a way, these are just exaggerated versions of what different genders are expected to do according to society. Men are expected to be willing to die for their country and women are expected to produce the next generation. This is especially obvious in right-wing, especially Fascist societies.

Of course, the warboys believe themselves to be privvy to some greater truth and thus they believe themselves to be part of the hierarchy, when in actuality they are just the tools of the warlord, who doesn’t care about them at all besides wanting to have enough of them to maintain his rule.

The women are able to break out of their role and protect themselves, even finding help from older women. They see their oppression, so they are willing to fight against it, unlike their male counterparts.

This might also be the right place to bring up Bechdel test. Its quite simple. To pass, the movie needs to have more than one woman in it, the women need to talk and they need to talk about something other than men. It was originally a joke in a small lesbian magazine, but it has sparked a lot of conversation about how to analyze the content of movies from the point of view of how they handle minorities. There’s the Sexy Lamp rule, the Ava DuVerney rule and Riz Ahmed rule among others (the last of which I discuss in another entry). Why bring Bechdel test up in this specific entry? Because this is one of the few movies on the list that actually passes it.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t feminist takes on other movies on the list, but at the same time, so many of the movies have been made specifically about situations which are quite malecentric, such as war or the Old West and so forth. Even this specific movie could have easily been very different in this regard, but it manages to pass with flying colors.

44. The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940, USA)

A Jewish barber was left in a coma after The Great War. When he finally wakes up, things have changed. His people is being persecuted by the new regime run by Hynkel, a parody of… you know who. The barber doesn’t know about the new situation, so he risks himself by standing up to the police, who are out to kill him. This leads to the formation of a resistance with the help of a high-ranking army officer, who is not behind the anti-semitic sentiment..

This might have been very topical then, but this is sadly topical now. How little have we learned. Anti-semitism is on the rise again, while politicians around the world have been using similar rhetoric as is parodied in the film (you know, the basic stuff: just say freedom and that’s a speech in itself).

The Jewish people are at the same time portrayed as weak and as powerful. Again, this is how fascists rhetoric works. They need to have an enemy which everyone (or at least enough of the populace) can hate, who are an existential threat. Then you tell them how easy they are to win, because you are so powerful.

This does manage to satirize this behavior very well. While Hynkel is laughable in front of a crowd, behind closed doors Hynkel is just a buffoon. His crafted masculinity falls completely apart. He is also very insecure and feels the need to seem powerful, which is often made difficult by his small stature.

There isn’t nearly as much slapstick humor here as there is in Chaplin’s previous movies. The humor is pretty juvenile by today’s standards as well (the propaganda minister is called Garbitsch, for example. Get it? Garbitsch. Get it?). The power of the movie is elsewhere. It’s knowing that most of the world didn’t even know about the extent of how bad the situation in Germany was, but here Chaplin was making a powerful movie about that in 1940.

I do get why many people would rather latch on some other Chaplin movies. This was a crossroads for his career. His approach to comedy was changing and this was also his first full sound movie. Modern Times was partly sound, but it was shot as a silent movie. His previous movies were much lighter in tone, even though they did have a lot of leftist messaging.

Women are rare here. We do have a couple of wives, but the only real female character is Hannah, the love interest for the barber. As so often happened with Chaplin, the actress was also his wife, although this time she was actual adult, unlike his three other wives when they were first married. (For example, his second wife, Lita Grey, was only 12 when she had a small role as Flirtatious Angel in The Kid, they were married just four years later. Yup.)

Anyhow, Hannah is capable, but is also always left out due to her gender. She can clearly take care of herself better then many of the men, but she is still to be protected. She has to take the female role. None of the men are asked to help in the kitchen before a meeting.

However, while she isn’t allowed to fight, the movie does imply that the barber is fighting specifically for her.

43. Kontroll (Control) (Nimród Antal, 2003, Hungary)

Bulcsú is an inspector for the subway system of Budapest. He leads a team of misfits, who spend the time not only working, but also playing around and competing with other teams. However, Bulcsú has a secret. He can’t leave. He is trapped underground. He used to be on a career path, but for better or for worse, he lost all of that.

And it is it’s own world. The movie was shot during the hours the Budapest subway system, the second oldest metro in the world after London and was listed as a World Heritage Site just a year before this movie premiered, was otherwise closed, so the filmmakers can use the already eerie area to their advantage.

There is sort of a plot about a serial killer who works in the subways, also about a not very friendly rivalry between Bulcsú’s crew and another, as well as a fair dodger, who always manages to outrun them, but besides Bulcsú being accused of being the killer, these aren’t actually that important in the big picture. Mostly this is a character piece about this person, who used to be considered successful, but is now, due to trauma, unable to face the world outside.

So how does Bulcsú finally overcome that trauma to be able to finally leave the subway system? Well, a woman, obviously. He meets the daughter of another man, who doesn’t seem to leave the subways. However, there is a subversion here. Throughout the movie, she wears a very puffy, pink bunny costume. Only her face is visible. While Bulcsú is immediately infatuated by her, it’s clearly not because of her body, since we never see it, which is a far cry from similar characters in many other movies, where female characters in these kinds of roles would often be introduced in a very male gaze-y way, thus communicating to the viewers that this is going to be a character that is going to be important to her male counterpart. This movie makes it clear as well, but with camera movement and the look on Bulcsú’s eyes. Whenever there are opportunities to shoot her in a male gaze, we only get her suit. Although I’m not faulting for anyone being aroused by the tail-wagging.

Still, the way this situation is portrayed does show women in an unhealthy light. We should be egalitarian, not see women as magical. That is not the way to healthy relationships.

Other women in the movie are rare. The ones I remember are some prostitutes, who regularly ride the subway and never have tickets, and some other inspectors, mostly from a montage of psych evaluations for-apparently all employees. That does tell you something about the mindset of the filmmakers. Femininity is seen as a special characteristic, so they don’t give it to many characters. And the ones (outside of Bulcsú’s romantic interest) are there as butts of jokes, usually on sexuality.

In the end, does Bulcsú even need to leave his underground? Sure, sleeping on the ground is not comfortable, but what does the aboveground actually offer him? He has already given up his career and that was probably for his benefit. The doors opening for him is depicted similarly to heaven’s gates opening for him with him being drowned out by the light, because in a sense the Bulcsú we know is about to die.

42. Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (Vittorio De Sica, 1949, Italy)

Antonio, among many others, is desperately looking for work in post-WWII Italy. When he finally finds a job, it requires a bike, which he does not possess, but is able to find one in time. However, during his first day on the job, the bike is stolen from him.

De Sica’s previous film, Shoeshine, had been too controversial to the Italian studios, so De Sica had to find financing for the film on his own. This might have been a positive, as he ended up going with amateur actors, who were cheaper. Not that making a movie in 1948 would have been cheap even in this case, as they weren’t exactly capable of just whipping out their iPhone like they did on movies like Tangerine and Unsane.

A lot happens in this movie. There is a lot of different locations and characters, so this must have been a big project or at least on par with many other projects at the time.

It’s the most famous example of Italian neorealism. Like the name suggest, this cinematic movement aimed to make their works feel real. And they often did. Antonio here is desperate and you can indeed feel it. It tells a believable story in an authentic way. It was especially meaningful to the people of the time, as the war and the economic strife after it were still in living memory. Not only in the living memory like some people still remember it today, but it had only been a few years. The country had lost the war (I guess they technically changed sides at the very end, but that’s a different discussion) and the people paying the price were poor folk like Antonio and his family.

My understanding of postwar Italy is much worse than that of postwar Germany, but I would assume many things went similarly. In Germany, the political class was punished for the war and replaced by puppets, but the executives from many of the big companies, some of which massively benefited from concentration camps, for example, were reinstated in West Germany, because it was thought that their help and expertise was needed to get the country running during the Cold War.

… and yet, the workers took the brunt of the war, just like they had during the war, which they fought.

Movies like these are important, because they remind us of this. It is still happening today. The US troops come from the poorest families, who can’t otherwise afford college. Russia had a conscription in 2022 and somehow it pretty much became a part of a genocide, when they took most of the men from smaller republics that are minority Russian within Russia. It’s always going to be the ones who can’t defend themselves.

The hierarchy within the family also shows. Antonio is out looking for work, but his wife, Maria, is taking care of the home. There is no egalitarianism here. There is no expectation of her taking part in bringing in money. Sure, this is a cultural thing. From the few Italian people I know, this is still the case, and it is good if a family can survive on one income, but that just often isn’t the case anymore.

41. Kanashimi no Beradonna (Belladonna of Sadness) (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973, Japan)

Jeanne and Jean are in love, but they can’t get married, because they can’t afford to pay the taxes involved. So, they petition their feudal lord, but instead the lord takes advantage of Jeanne and not just for his own benefit, but she is used to the grotesque delight of everyone in the court. Jeanne, now left alone, as Jean has now become distant, seeks help from dark forces.

This is an animation, but for the longest time the only thing fully animated is that dark force, which is Satan in a form of a penis. It does stand out (get it, huh, get it?). The rest of the early film was made with a technique used often in early Japanese animation: It’s gorgeous watercolor paintings, which are panned, zoomed and rotated to make it feel like there’s movement without actually using more than one painting for each of these scenes, which is a big difference from the 12 images per second in most western animation (which is of course less than the roughly 24 images per second – depending on the format – for live action). Later in the movie, when things get fully off the rails, we get more animation, including a wild, psychodelic section of the movie.

Despite being a Japanese movie, this takes place in Europe. It’s actually an interesting lens on how Japanese understand certain parts of the history of Europe. It’s loosely based on a sort of non-fiction book called Satanism and Witchcraft by Jules Michelet from 1862 (even though the movie actually takes a very fairy tale approach by starting with “once upon a time”). The book is about how women had to learn witchcraft just to be able to gain any power in society (so, sort of non-fiction, but holds wild beliefs). It is weirdly understanding of these women, so you could even call it protofeminist. (Also worth noting: the book seems like it takes many supernatural stories at face value, but I’m not sure whether that’s just the chosen style for someone writing in the 19th century, or whether Michelet was really buying all that weirdness.)

In The Keepers, a documentary series about the unsolved murder of a nun in the late 60s Baltimore, there’s a woman, who was a victim, one of many, of a priest in the area. Her husband says something that is at the same time extremely kind and completely toxic: He says he saw her as a virgin, because she had never consented.

Okay, sure, that’s good that you can see past the multiple rapes, but at the same, why is her virginity important? Jeanne is not as lucky. Her prospective husband doesn’t see it that way. She is now seen as spoiled.

So, what is she to do? In a small community that might very well be the end of the line for her. If she can’t find a husband, she has no prospects in life. So, why wouldn’t she turn to Satan? At least that will give her some sort of opportunity to live. You do what you need to. We, as a society, just shouldn’t force people into that situation. Even if we disregard the ethics, from a financial point of view, it is better to take care of people, because they will cause other costs.

And again, this is just the financials. It just happens that the financial benefits happen to coincide with the ethical benefits.

40. In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009, United Kingdom)

The legendary Malcolm Tucker (and yes, this character is legendary) is trying to figure out how to avoid a war into which the UK prime minister and the president of the US are trying to take the countries. Everything seems to be fine until one of the other ministers, who is actually against the war, misspeaks in an interview, gets way in over his head and becomes a pawn in international politics.

Tucker is a much more interesting character than one would initially think. He is crude, cruel and he likes to shout at people, but there is more to him. He is actually very polite to his secretary and the one time he raises his voice at her (not in this movie, mind you), he immediately regrets it and apologizes. Is this because he thinks so little of the politicians around him? Does he want to maintain a good relationship with the one person he is around all the time as he is single and still needs some kind of a network to keep him from completely going off the rails? Or does he just actually care for the “little people”?

So, while his obscenities are imaginative and plentiful, they are directed at very specific people, namely the politicians and sometimes people covering politics. He also knows his limits. He does not step on his bosses toes (directly), neither does he step on the toes of the powerful US officials (again, directly).

On the other hand, he doesn’t get that much screen time. This is fine, since hundred minutes of someone just insulting and threatening people would get tiresome. Or at least the movie would not have made the list of my favorite movies. The usual flow is that someone does something, fails, Malcolm appears out of nowhere, as he is usually more on top of things then those around him, as he should be, gives some instructions on how to fix the situation, which just leads to more trouble, usually because Malcolm’s advice wasn’t really followed due to incompetence. This usually continues until a sacrifice of someone’s career is required to save someone more important.

Malcolm’s relationship to those around him is complicated. Those who get into his crosshairs do often try to stand up for themselves, but they also know that Malcolm has plenty of strings to pull if it ever comes to that, so they don’t push back too much.

Of course, the thing that doesn’t really get said is that they are planning a war against an unnamed Middle-Eastern country. They don’t get any kind of say in all this. It’s just the officials of these two countries playing their little political games without any concern for the people. Sure, some of them are anti-war, but it all seems more general philosophy than actual regard for whoever they are going into war against.

Not that their own soldiers get treated much better. They are just numbers. The main negative side of the war seems to be that it wouldn’t work out as planned with the troops they have.

There’s a clear distinction between the British and the US government officials. The US officials seem very embedded in their jobs and in their environment. In comparison, the Brits seem like they are just paddling water in order to stay afloat long enough to survive whatever is going on. Simon, our hapless cabinet minister, is also handling whatever minor grievances his constituents come to him with as well as a dispute between himself and his neighbor, who is concerned about the condition of the wall between their houses.

Simon isn’t rich like the US politicians. He’s just a guy, who went into politics. He is playing a similar game, but it’s almost like an introductory version of what the US politicians are doing.

Not that there’s any point to what the US politicians are up to. It is just a game. They just try to outsmart each other for no real reason. These things have already been settled.

The US system is nominally democratic, but when an issue goes to congress and/or senate, the propability of any legislation passing has very little to do with whether the general population supports it. But the support of the top 10% is crucial. If they don’t like a new piece of legislation, it will never pass. If they do like it, it will have a much stronger chance of passing, but the whole institution is so ineffective even in these situations, that there’s still a strong chance it just doesn’t.

As I’m writing this, it’s about a month since the Republicans made themselves look like a joke again by kicking out Kevin McCarthy from his leadership position in favor of a weirdo compromise candidate, Mike Johnson.

And yet, most of them will be reelected. Hooray for white men protecting their positions. (Note that I did write this before the 2024 elections, so if this text is still here, I did not remember to check the results. The point is very probably still valid.)

39. Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) (Wim Wenders, 1987, Germany)

An angel falls in love with a trapeze artist, who works in a failing circus. The angel then decides, against the advice of his colleague, to become a mortal, even if there is no return. However, he is not alone in this. He meets another former angel, who guides him in his new life (although, for some weird reason, that former angel is thinking about his mother when we meet him earlier in the movie).

Before we get to the story, there’s a long section in which we just follow the angels following humans around Berlin. I didn’t think of this until I was writing this, so I haven’t checked if this is a much explored idea or intentional by Wenders, but in a way we, as the audience, are angels to the angels, as we have a similar role as observers. We are watching the watchers. BFI does have an article on their website according to which this is a film about watching, so I’m not the first one to think of this (which is kind of common).

But there is a difference between just watching and participating. When Damiel, our main angel, does take the step to become a human, he suddenly sees everything in color, when it was all sepia-toned black and white before that (achieved reportedly by shooting through a silk stocking). The message here is kind of obvious.

The movie doesn’t use this in any way, but the woman Damiel falls for, Marion, is put into an awkward situation. Suddenly, there’s this guy, who looks 20 years older than her (because that’s the age difference between the actors), but clings on to her and doesn’t really know anything about how the world works. Even his interest in her seems to stem from the wings she uses while performing as he caresses them while still being invisible to her (which is kind of creepy considering his plans, his observation kind of becomes stalking quite fast).

So, once again we are in a situation, where she becomes the prize for him. He gets her for no real reason. She isn’t given a choice. This is just how movies so often see women. To her, he is like a big child. Would sex between the two even be ethical?

On a different note, the title (in German) mentions Berlin and this is also very much a movie about that. The translation definitely does a disservice to the audience in this regard. Berlin was still divided at this point, but the unification was already looming. Just the following year Brehznev Doctrine was abandoned and Warsaw Pact countries were given the ability to control their internal politics, which lead to the Berlin Wall coming down in the very next year and the two countries reuniting in the following year. Did Wenders know this was coming? Did he intend to document the final days of the city in the way he wanted to? After all, the city did have a vibrant, if gloomy, art community during those days. I don’t know if this still applies, but in those days the whole situation in Berlin was a good setting for many purposes that clearly inspired a lot of artists.

According to the aforementioned piece on BFI’s website, the movie is angst-ridden. I never felt that. To me it’s a much warmer film. In life, things might hectic and the lives of the people are unpredictable, but at the same time, the movie does tell us that in this world, there is always a friendly being looking over us. Well, in this world. It is a nice fantasy, but as an atheist, that’s the extent of all of this for me. Sure, there’s plenty of people who are sad or in pain or sometimes just bored. In this sense people are banal. At the same time, how horrible would it be if we were constantly stimulated by something? If we lived basically in a movie all of the time without the blank spaces where life happens between scenes? That isn’t angst. That’s just life. Even if Nick and the Bad Seeds are around to soundtrack it (as well as another much lesser known and admittedly lesser band which also had former Birthday Party members in it, Crime and the City Solution).

Fun fact: The assistant director for this movie was none other than Claire Denis, who finally, after a 15 year career as a second unit director, started making her own films, such as the universally renowned Beau Travail.

38. The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987, USA)

A young boy is sick and his grandfather arrives to read him a book, which happens to be the main story of the movie. The story itself is about Westley, a farmhand, who falls in love with woman he is working for, but life isn’t simple and he leaves to make his fortune. While he is gone for an extended period of time, she becomes despondent and ends up bethroned to Prince Humberdinck, who has his own plans for her. He then has to rescue her with the help of a very iconic gang.

This is a beloved movie these days, but it wasn’t always so. In my youth (meaning the 90s), this was seen as too quirky. You weren’t supposed to have fun this way. This was the era of grunge music and edgy comics.

Since then this has become one of the best examples of reexamining pieces of media through a post-ironic lense. Yes, you can find media and art fun. It doesn’t take away from it. Quite the opposite. Some of the more dramatic moments work better when contrasted with the lighter material.

The story itself is kind of stupid, but – as usual – it doesn’t really matter, as the characters are the important part. The story is there to move us from one glorious character moment to another. And honestly, I can’t really claim the character moments weren’t stupid too, but somehow they just pull it off. I mean, I have had this movie on this list since the inaugural edition in 2005. Like Vizzini might say, this movie and it’s longevity is inconceivable, but the earnestness just works.

The one character, who doesn’t get any interesting backstory or characterization of pretty much any sort is the titular Princess Bride or Princess Buttercup. She is there just as the prize. Her only character trait is that she is loyal to Westley because of True Love. There is no agency, no growth, no opportunity for her to further the plot. She is hardly better than a MacGuffin here. Sure, she has a few lines of dialogue, but not much. The only reason she is a woman instead of like treasure or something, is that love is a better or at least more symphathetic motivator for the hero than greed.

I think this also manifests itself in a weird way in the casting. While Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin and Andre the Giant seem to be unconventional choices for their parts, Robin Wright (who is clearly talented and has since had a distinguished career as an actor, but has also turned her hand into directing) seems to have been cast purely for her looks. I mean, Cary Elwes is hardly a typical action hero for this period, where muscular men ruled (although Die Hard would move the needle into a new direction around this time) with his very British presence, Mandy Patinkin came largely from a musical theatre background and Andre the Giant, while actually gigantic, could never really move that well, which shows. They seem to have been picked to give the movie a different kind of feel from other movies. In this sense Robin Wright is almost a step back.

Also, I do think that the message of true love is in itself somewhat toxic. It promotes the idea that your relationships need to be transcendental, instead of finding someone you enjoy spending time with and are compatitable enough to live. It also promotes the idea that if your relationship ends, there’s something wrong with you and you have somehow failed, instead of people changing or learning that maybe you just aren’t a good couple. Even I wrote “relationship fails” instead of “relationship ends”, because I’m also brainwashed in this regard. I don’t think all romantic relationships fail. Sometimes they have just run their course. The only failures are in not ending it at that point and not learning from the experience.

37. M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (M) (Fritz Lang, 1931, Germany)

The translation of the subtitle is something along the lines of “a city searches for a murderer”. (Note that my German is very rudimentary, but since it is an anglo-germanic language, you don’t need to be that familiar with it to manage reading that.) A city is indeed in complete disarray as a serial killer keeps murdering children and they can’t figure out who it is. Everyone is a suspect. In the end, the criminal element of the city decide that since police presence in the city has become intolerable for their businesses, they must therefore find the culprit.

Here’s a statistic you don’t necessarily want to hear: If we discount serial killers in medical professions, the profiles of the three first people on the list of the most prolific serial killers on Wikipedia start with the word “child-murderer”. The second of them, Pedro Lopez (I don’t know much about the other two) targeted good girls, those who were helpful. He would go to markets, where these girls were helping their parents and use their good nature to lure them away. He was convicted of 110 murders (mostly in Columbia), but might have killed more than 300 based on that same source. Scarier yet, he was released in the late 90s and no one knows where he is or what happened to him.

The murderer in this movie is nowhere near as prolific (I’m not sure it’s ever made explicit, but it would seem he has had three victims), but unlike Lopez, he is very stationary. He uses very similar methods to Lopez in finding victimx. He finds trusting girls, who are eager to please an adult. His last victim calls him ‘uncle’, so he is either lying to the child about being family or he has asked her to call her that in case someone finds the pair suspicious as they walk down the street.

Considering that the movie came out in 1931, this is actually eerily close to how these people operate. There just hadn’t been very many serial killers by that time (I mean, there probably had been, but due to primitive investigative methods, they probably weren’t easy to identify and would often be only convicted of one murder). Many of the ones that we know of might be just urban legends.

Not that there weren’t cases like these in the movie. For example, that of Fanny Adams, where the culprit beheaded a girl in England. Although, in that case, the culprit tried to be smooth, but failed completely and thus was caught immediately.

The movie emphasis procedure quite a bit. We have the police with their approaches and we have the criminals, who are able to quickly organize a citywide secret manhunt as well as a systematic search of a whole office building.

In that vein, the final act of the film (which hardly follows a three act structure) is all about the murderer’s trial at the hands of the criminals. He is provided a defense and he is heard by the crowd. The crowd is all too familiar with how this works and they are very ready to convice, because they need to get rid of him.

At the same time, the ethics of this situation are not very clear. Are the criminals interested in punishing him for the crimes? The murderer does have a passionate monologue about how he can’t control himself and there is definitely sympathy for that in the crowd, but in the end, they are not interested in his speech. They do draw the line in indiscriminate killing.

The criminals don’t trust the system in the sense that they don’t want to see the murderer put into an asylum, as they just assume that he will be either released or escape. There’s no assumption that the punishment or treatment might end his crimes. These are the people who would know. The justice system needs to be more understanding. The aim should be in rehabilitation, not in punishing the person or any kind of vengeance.

However, these kinds of cases make reform difficult. It’s hard to explain that you need to be understanding of criminals, when the first thing they think about when discussing criminals are these kinds of serial killers, instead of that guy, who just made a mistake.