Take 575: Watching the National Film Registry

  The African Queen  is a film full of contradictions, at least for me. It's chock-a-block with action...yet it's not exactly heart-stopping. There's the (at the time) scandalous romance between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn...but it's not the steamiest stuff (she plays a missionary, after all). The film stars actors who are widely considered America's greatest screen legends (it even won Bogart his only Academy Award)...yet I don't know that I would say this movie is the peak performance from either of them. The story follows Methodist Rose Sayer, working her missionary magic with her brother in German East Africa at the beginning (like, only a few weeks after the start) of World War I. Their supplies are brought to them via a steamboat, the  African Queen , helmed by the brusque and brutish Charlie Allnut. When Britain declares war on Germany, Charlie advises them to get out of Dodge, advice which they decline to follow. In a skirmish with German colon...

3:10 to Yuma is not a movie about cowboys. It is a movie about the complexity of human nature, conscience, and the choices that define us. This film follows down-on-his-luck rancher and family man Dan Evans as he is tasked with shepherding murderous outlaw Ben Wade, recently captured, onto the 3:10 train to Yuma, where he can be tried in court. Wade's posse is determined to free him, Wade himself is convinced he can bribe Evans to let him go, and the people he has wronged want revenge outside the justice system. And as all these motivations intertwine and erupt into a head, the 3:10 to Yuma chugs ever closer. This one is interesting because none of the major characters undergo real changes in personality or motivation, but the film still succeeds in engaging you with everything that happens and making you think . Playful at strategic times, dark and thematic at others, 3:10 to Yuma is hard to nail down, not least because it's not cut-and-dried when it comes to who you want to...

  Though in its day a critical and commercial flop, Ace in the Hole , a film about a disgraced newspaperman who creates a media circus to try to get back on top, still has a lot to offer. Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a reporter who has been let go from a slew of high-ranking papers because of his erratic and often abusive behavior. He finds himself working for a small-town paper in New Mexico, desperate for a big story to help him rekindle his career. He finds just the thing when he stumbles upon a man trapped in a collapsed cave. Tatum uses all his tricks to smooth-talk, bargain, and swindle everyone he meets for exclusive access to Leo, the trapped man, including the sheriff, the local press, and Lorraine, Leo's freedom-seeking wife. Tatum even goes so far as to force rescuers to take more time-consuming measures to free him, risking Leo's life in exchange for the story of a lifetime.  As the media circus surrounding the cave balloons into a veritable carnival, including ...

  This is one of the most stressful movies I've ever watched, and it's worth every one of the hairs standing at attention at the back of my neck. For a film that's nothing but a bunch of men arguing with each other in a locked room, 12 Angry Men  is suspenseful, thoughtful, and attention-demanding, supported by twelve powerhouse performances. This film follows twelve jurors tasked with determining the guilt of a young man from the slums, who has allegedly murdered his father. The judge imposes the standard of reasonable doubt: if there is a reasonable doubt about the boy's guilt, the jury must come to a verdict of not guilty. And so it begins. Henry Fonda plays Juror 8, at the start the only juror who questions the assumptions of the other men that the defendant is guilty. He demands discussion before a verdict is reached, and as he argues his case, the biases and interests of the other eleven men emerge: the man who grew up in the slums and doesn't take kindly to p...

Combining whodunnit, film noir, and slapstick humor, Who Framed Roger Rabbit seamlessly blends animated and live-action characters and settings to create a hybrid masterpiece. It follows washed-up, toon-hating private detective Eddie Valiant as he is roped into investigating cartoon character Roger Rabbit, who is wanted for murder in 1940s Los Angeles. As he delves deeper into the case, he uncovers a web of corruption and deception that he must unravel to clear Roger's name.  Like with The Maltese Falcon , I've seen this movie a dozen times, but I'm always surprised by the ending. The performances by Christopher Lloyd and (especially) Bob Hoskins are spot on throughout, providing grounding to balance out the giddiness and always-on quality of the toon characters. That being said, it's amazing how authentic and real  every character, ink or flesh, feels. This would have been a very easy movie to get wrong, to be either over- or under-invested in, to be overly lazy or ove...