Take 575: Watching the National Film Registry

  4 Little Girls should be required viewing for every American. I don't care how old you are, what color you are, your political inclinations, or what part of the country you live in. I don't even care if you've never given the Civil Rights Movement a passing thought. You still need to watch this. Spike Lee's  4 Little Girls  follows the story of the 1963 16th Street church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls and caused over a dozen injuries. It led to the trial and conviction of Klansman Robert Chambliss, and it was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. The bombing elicited a national reaction of shock and outrage that helped spur the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it facilitated a shift in how white America viewed the Civil Rights Movement. Spike Lee treats these events with the gravity and dignity they deserve: he pulls no punches, leaves no stone unturned, engages with the fury that this subject naturally dredges up, a...

  The 7th Voyage of Sinbad  has a lot of elements of both epic hero stories and classic fairy tales. It tells the story of Sinbad, a sailor and next in line for the Caliph of Baghdad. He is engaged to the lovely Princess Parisa, daughter of the Sultan of Chandra. For some reason, she's on his ship when he lands on Colossa, an island populated by enormous, terrifying monsters. When Sinbad and his crew arrive on Colossa, they manage to save a sorcerer, Sokurah, who is being chased by a cyclops. In the course of the rescue, Sokurah loses his magic, genie-inhabited lamp (you'd think he'd take better care to secure it, wouldn't you?), but Sinbad refuses to return to Colossa so Sokurah can retrieve it. This ship returns to Baghdad, where Sokurah, desperate to return to Colossa to retrieve his lamp, secretly shrinks Parisa down to only a few inches tall. When Sinbad and Parisa's father find her, Sokurah explains that he can set her right with a potion...but it requires a s...

  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...