#64 UNBREAKABLE

Unbreakable may be the greatest superhero movie of all time. It is Shyamalan at the peak of his game right before he made his gradual journey to the toilet. So let's embrace the good times.

Shyamalan sets it all up with two scenes that induce mystery. In the first a baby boy is born with his arms and legs broken, crying in agony. This is an incredibly rare occurence for something like this to happen and the doctor is baffled and concerned. In the second scene a man named David, played by Bruce Willis, is the sole survivor of a catastrophic train derailment and he literally doesn't have a scratch on him. Once again bafflement. The title is Unbreakable and both of these scenes are related to this. The opening frame of the movie had a series of facts about comic books so all of this is also somehow related to comic books as well. "Where is this heading?" You definately get the sense that you're heading somewhere really intriguing but you're not sure where. Gradually more and more is revealed and by the end you have experienced an incredible suspense movie and a one of a kind superhero movie.

My favorite part of almost any superhero movie is when the hero begins to understand and experience their power. The hero is blown away by theses new abilities. They've been transformed. It's also about watching the shocked expressions of those around them. This isn't happening. This motherfucker didn't just fly or scale that ten story building. It's seeing the extraordinary in the realm of the ordinary. It's almost like there is a greater meaning in the world. The incredible is happening. In "Unbreakable" the entire movie centers around this element. It uses the elements of suspense and mystery to gradually reveal this man as a superhero. Instead of having that moment in a film where the magic happens and then the novelty of this person's superpowers wears off it happens piece by piece. We get nugget after nugget of this slow revelation. The whole movie from lesser degree to greater degree. "Wow this dude could be something special." "Holy shit I think this dude really is something special." "Is he some kind of a superhero?" "He might be a superhero. how cool." "He is a superhero. Damn this movie rocks."

It obviously begins with the train derailment, and then he gets a message on his windshield. "Have you ever been sick?" The message was left by the other main character in the film, which is the broken baby from the beginning all grown up. His name is Elijah, played by Samuel Jackson and he becomes something of a mentor for David. He has had a tortured life in which the slightest bump or fall leads to a series of broken bones. His obsession from an early age is comic books. He knows everything there is to know about them and considers them to be anthropological and believes comic book heroes walk the earth. His belief is that the first comics were written about real life heroes on the walls of caves, and that over time real life superheroes were exaggerated to become the images in comics today. Elijah has been waiting for someone like David to come along, someone who had survived a disaster without a scratch. He needs to believe that if someone in the world like him exists that can break so easily there must be someone at the opposite spectrum. He has been desperately searching for this person and believes that if he finds someone who has never been injured or sick it gives his life more meaning and completes him somehow. He tries to tell David that he is something special but for most of the movie he doesn't listen. David thinks he's a nut and resists until what he has to say makes sense.

The reason that I like but don't generally love superhero movies is that they usually aren't grounded in reality. There's usually something otherworldly or fantastical that happens that makes it harder for me to relate to the situation. Superman comes from another planet. Spiderman is bitten by a radio-active spider. The Hulk is a man who turns into a giant beast. Most superhero movies also have an overly eccentric supervillain with the depth of my little toe. There have been two superhero movies that came out recently that I really loved. One was "The Dark Knight" which is firmly grounded in a realistic modern city, centering around politics and crime, and a villain who can't be pinpointed or labeled. It's a villain that doesn't really want anything but chaos. This is interesting and terrifying. I also loved "Kick Ass" which takes place in what could double for the typical high school comedy setting. Definately not a superhero setting. The heroes are super because they have willed themselves to be and the villain is a typical mob boss not a guy with eight mechanical arms. "Unbreakable" is set in the suburbs of Philadelphia and it tells a believable story with believable characters. David is shut down and lost. His marriage is on the verge of ending, his wife is depressed and withdrawn, and his son caught in the middle of all of this. He works security at the local University Collisseum and just always feels that something is just not right about his life. He just can't figure out what it is. This is a superhero movie but it's also a story about finding your path. I believe he has always known that his path was to be a superhero but because of the weight of that type of responsibility, and loneliness and pain, he suppressed this knowledge his whole life. In effect he is a lost soul. It's symbolic of how much power we all have and how much we're all willing to face.

David begins to realize that he has never been sick or injured. Deep down he's known this but once again he has repressed it. He begins to realize that his hunches are actual psychic abilities that have yet to be explored. There is a great scene of him weightlifting in his basement with his son looking on and no matter how much weight his son puts on he keeps lifting it. The two of them are witnessing his extraordinary strength. Every superhero has a weakness and he is reminded of an incident as a kid, which he has forgotten, in which he nearly drowned in the school pool. His weakness is water. He walks around in an oversized hooded raincoat in the rain and this is his costume. He is later known as "The Raincoat Man." All of these gradual revelations are grounded in reality. None are fantastical or unbelievable but it is still really cool shit. You can relate to all of this making it more relevant and transcendent.

So now he knows that he's a superhero so he must have his first test. Elijah says to him "Go to where people are. You won't have to look very long. It's alright to be afraid David. This part of won't be like a comic book." This is a good time to talk about the overall tone of the movie. It's dark and somber. It moves slowly as if there is a weight upon it but this is not a bad thing. The tone reflects the mood of David in his isolation and existential crisis and also the reality of being a superhero. It's hard. It's scary. It's a heavy weight. You really feel this as David is coming into his power and as he's walking towards his first real experience. It's dark and rainy and after a man bumps up against him he has a flash of this man doing terrible things to a family. He waits and follows the man to the house and this isn't spiderman zipping away after Doc Oc. It's not Superman trying to stop Lex Luther. It's a terrified man on a dark and stormy night approaching a house that is occupied by a serial killer and its victims. It's a nightmare and its portrayed in that way. David finds two kids in the house and unbinds them. They're terrified. He unbinds the parents and they're dead. It's brutal. He stands out on the balcony and the killer comes up from behind and pushes him over the ledge and he lands on top of a tarp on a pool. Brilliant. He's slowing sinking into his kryptonite. It's a struggle but with the help of the escaped kids he makes it out of the pool and there is this awesome moment. The kids are standing there watching him slowly standing up by the pool and there he is in all his glory. The Rain Coat Man survives and the great theme music which is emotional and haunting is blasting. Rain Coat Man's gonna smack down. He makes his way back upstairs, sneaks up behind the killer, and no matter how many times the killer slams him against the wall he won't let go. He's Unbreakable and the killer loses.

One of the last scenes of the movie is beautiful. It signifies that this man is now found. The family as well has a chance. David is sitting at the breakfast table with his wife and for about the only time in the movie they are having a happy easeful moment. The son walks in kind of surprised to see this, sits down, and pours himself some cereal. David slowly slides the newspaper across to him and there is a story about The Raincoat Man. He whispers to his son "You were right." The son starts to cry. He has desperately wanted this to be true. It's every kids dream that their father is a hero and I believe that he always instinctively knew that he was a superhero, and that until his father embraced it himself he would always be partly lost like his father. It's a moment of relief and joy.

O.k. now for the final shocking scene. In what should be a celebratory scene for both men at Elijah's comic book exhibit Elijah says "I think this is where we shake hands." David gets a psychic flash of Elijah at all of these disaster sights and realizes that he had caused the train derailment as well as countless other catastrophes. He sees blueprints and newspaper clippings on the wall and walks backwards in shock and terror. He at the end realizes that his mentor is his archenemy. Elijah's last words are "They call me Mr. Glass." and you walk out of the theatre with goosebumps.

#32 THE DEPARTED

Martin Scorcese is arguably one of the top five directors in film history. He's created a masterpiece in four different decades and some would argue that not even Steven Spielberg has done that. Scorcese makes great films and great movies. "Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" are all great films. They are brilliant but more character studies and examinations of familiar Scorcese themes of universes of violence, self destruction, faith, loneliness and attempts at redemption. These ideas and themes are told through the conventions of story and film but the focus is more on the characters growth or lack thereof, the characters reaction and behavior in a world of violence and no one does this better. There aren't too many Directors with the knowledge and expertise of the use of film that he has so everything he does is riveting. Scorcese post-70's made some great movies such as "The color of money", "Cape Fear", and possibly his best work "Goodfellas." In the last decade he did "The Gangs of New York", and "The Aviator". Neither of these was his best work but both were very good and proved that everything he puts on film with the exception of "Bringing Out The Dead" is impressive. As he's gotten older he has melded explorations within film and great storytelling. He has taken his themes and his beautiful way of making film and injected it into tighter, better paced, more richly woven stories. "The Gangs of New York" is a good example of this, "Goodfellas" is a very good example of this and "The Departed" is the perfect example of this.

"The Departed" has all of the aspects of a great movie. First of all at the core of it is the perfect cat and mouse premise. A cop is undercover as a mobster and a mobster is undercover as a detective. Both are connected to the same Special Investigations Unit. These two roles are filled by two Oscar nominated actors, Leonardo Dicaprio and Matt Damon, who seem to get better with each successive role. Add Jack Nicholson, a legend and arguably our greatest living actor as a mob boss. Then tack on a dream supporting cast including Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, up and coming oscar nominated actress Vera Farmiga, and Mark Wahlberg overachieving in one of his best roles. Put all of this into the arms of the master Martin Scorcese and we still haven't revealed what may be the true star of this movie and that is the dialogue written by William Monahan. This is one of those movies that you could quote endlessly. A genius director with a handful of Oscar caliber actors to fill out extremely well written characters with dynamite dialogue in a perfectly paced crime thriller and you've got one of the best movies of the decade.

Two minutes into the film and we already have two spectacular quotes that sum up so much about this movie. The first quote opens the film amidst footage of race riots in Boston during the 1960's. Frank Costello, mob boss god in the Irish community of Boston, played by Jack
Nicholson, says in voice-over "I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me." Costello, still in voice-over , talks a little bit about the history of South Boston, about the Irish Knights of Columbus who just took over their piece of the city, how twenty years after an Irishman couldn't even get a fucking job they had the presidency. We then see a silhouette of Costello walking in slow motion from right to left on screen, smoking a cigarette and cooly blowing out the smoke. The beginning of "Street Fighting Man" by The Rolling Stones is playing in the background to feed the image some extra soul and Costello says "That's what the niggers don't realize. If I got one thing against the black chappy's it's this. No one gives it to you. You have to take it." Scorcese has stolen us for this film in mere minutes.

The second layer of setup for this movie is a magnificent prologue. We quickly zoom in on a grocery store/Deli in a quick, efficient scene. This scene introduces us to Frank Costello and one of our main characters, Colin Sullivan. It shows us the power of this man, the ability to seduce and intimidate and we understand how Colin Sullivan could be and was seduced. Costello collects money from the owner, flirts with the owner's daughter while the owner fearfully looks on. The boy at the booth is taking this all in and you can see him taking this all in. Sullivan sees that this man can do whatever he wants. He is all powerful. Costello then begins his seduction. He finds out who the boy is, realizes his father is dead, which I imagine really got the bells ringing because Costello could be somewhat of a father figure. He fixes a bag of groceries for him; bread, coldcuts, milk, soup, cheese, mayonaise and comic books. We see each individual item put into the bag. This is a process of seduction so it's important not to just see him with a bag of groceries but to see the whole process.. This is an important moment for Scorcese to show the audience the lure of this man because Sullivan will eventually be lured away from his young life as an alterboy. The best line in this scene;
Costello- "You do good in school?"
Sullivan- "Yeah."
Costello- "That's good. I did too. They call that a parradox."
After this scene we cut from a scene of Sullivan as an altar boy at his church to a scene with Costello with Sullivan and other boys his age, trying to recruit loyal soldiers at an early age.
Costello- " The church wants you in your place. Kneel, stand, kneel, stand. If you go for that sorta thing I don't know what to do for you. A man makes his own way. No one gives it to you. You have to take it. Non Servium. When you decide to be something you can be it. This is what they don't tell you in the church. When I was your age they would say you could become cops or you could become criminals. Today what I'm saying to you is this. When you're facing a loaded gun what's the difference?"
We cut to a Montage of scenes of Sullivan all grown up in the police academy. It then cuts to the other main player in this movie, Billy Costigan, played by Leonardo Dicaprio taking a police academy test. It then cuts to Sullivan graduating and after a scene of Costello congratulating Sullivan and truly welcoming him into the family as a mole in the police force there is a number of cross-cutting between Sullivan and Costigan training as state police. There is such a perfect precision of pacing and balance to this cutting that we understand that there will be an important balance to these characters, that they will be related in an important way, but this doesn't take away from a blistering pace that keeps us in there. The next scene is the final setup for this story. It's slower because we need to know more about Costigan. We've learned a lot about Sullivan but we know next to nothing about Costigan. This is the scene in which we are really introduced to this character. Both characters, individually, go into the head of the Special Investigations Unit but we spend much more time with Costigan and it's such a great scene. After Sullivan leaves the office Costigan reports to Captain Queenan, head of SIU, played by Martin Sheen and Staff Sgt. Dignan, played by Mark Wahlberg. It was easy for Sullivan but they really grill Costigan. They want to make sure he's the right man for the undercover job and Dignan is brutal.

Dignan- "How fucked up are you?"

Dignan- "Why are you pretending to be a cop".

We learn about Costigan's past.

Dignan- "Your family's all crooks except for your old man. Fucking family's dug into the southy projects like ticks. You however grew up on the north shore. Well la de fucking da. You were kind of a double kid right? One kid with your old man one kid with your mother. Upper middle class during the weeks then you're dropping your eyes and hanging in the big bad southy projects with your daddy the fucking donkey on the weekends. Got that right? What's a lace curtain motherfucker like you doing in the staties?"

Giving this scene creedance is the wise, fatherly presence of Queenan trying to get the same information in a more good-cop manner. They both tell him that he won't be a cop in five years. It's not who he is. He's too smart. They realize that he is rebelling against the wealthy side of his family, who after his mother dies will cease to exist, but though he has experienced the violence of the southy projects it isn't who he is. So here's a complicated character. There is violence in him as we'll see in several scenes after this one but he is not of violence. His experience around violence and his toughness because of this will be enough to go under in the Costello gang but the fact that he is not of violence will slowly make him more and more vulnerable in this environment and torture him the way that the weekends in the southy projects probably tortured him growing up. This is a very well drawn, complex character and adds to the tension of this movie because you feel his tension as the movie progresses towards its conclusion. Queenan and Dignan convince him that he won't be a cop but that he can play the role of a cop for a little while and help them catch Costello. It will mean going to prison for a little while to convince Costello that he is legit. Costigan really goes through some shit in this movie and Dicaprio really makes you feel it. As we see the scene of Costigan getting grilled we also cut to scenes of Sullivan moving into a huge apartment, flirting confidently with women in the hall, basically living the good life. All of this material is a prologue for the real story to begin. It's amazing that we have already watched such great stuff and then after all of this the main title comes onto the screen saying "You ain't seen nothing yet." and ain't that the truth.

The movie follows Costigan as he gets closer and closer to danger in the Costello gang. It also follows Sullivan. One of the things that we've seen from Matt Damon is that he can play brilliant, cocky, tough, and tortured and he is all of these to some extent in this movie. You see his cockiness walking the halls of the SIU flirting with the female officers, the way he acts with his new girlfriend, the way he carries himself in meetings and he's basically a prick but he's a great prick and this makes him a very interesting character. There are subtle glimpses of his tortured soul. The way he looks out his window at the church that he turned his back on, his body language on a bench as he's about to start working as a mole at SIU and the look in his eyes every time he's on the phone with Costello. As the movie progresses you really see his fear around Costello. He's also an interesting character because he's impotent. He's become great at what he does, he's a master deceiver, a professional liar, and ever since he sold his soul to Costello and turned his back on the church he lost his true essence. Both of these actors do such a great job filling out these characters and we root for Costigan but we're incredibly interested in Sullivan too even though he's turned to the dark side.

The story just keeps ratcheting up as the SIU suspects that there is a mole in their unit which, ironically, Sullivan is in charge of finding, and Costello suspects a rat in his gang. The tension for both of these characters keeps building. Costigan begins to look for salvation in Queenan begging him to get him out once things begin to get scarier under the control of an increasingly unstable Costello and Queenan is a very likeable and understanding character who sympathizes with Costigan but needs him to press on just a little bit more. Sullivan is also stressed because Costello is making his job increasingly more difficult. There are two great scenes within this framework of tension that i'm going to discuss but the first scene I want to talk about involves Costello, Queenan, and Dignan.

Queenan and Dignan run into Costello and try to get some information out of him about stolen micro-processors and during the exchange Queenan says "I'm gonna get you." Costello then slowly says "If ya coulda ya woulda. But I guess you like to go at your own pace. Excuse me. I've got a date with some angels." As he's saying this a line of girls dressed up as angels walks by with a nun and his girlfriend is standing nearby. His girlfriend and him then walk behind the angels. Visually this is a great symbolic moment. The all powerful god of this community, evil in every way walks behind goodness and purity as if either prowling or its ruler.

There is a great cat and mouse scene between Costigan and Sullivan where Costigan is following Sullivan. It begins in a porno theatre and then into the back alleys and streets of Boston. It's nighttime, there's steam coming up from the street vents, incredible use of shadow, especially in one moment where you see both of their shadows on the side of a brick wall which reminded me of an opening scene in "A Touch of Evil." Sullivan is aware someone is following him and Costigan is desperately trying to find Sullivan and we are dying for it to happen. It's the undercurrent of this whole movie, these two colliding. Costigan's phone goes off at just the wrong time and he barely misses identifying the SIU mole, they both continually look around corners and get jolted by innocent bystanders and Sullivan mistakenly stabs someone who he thought was the man following him. The scene continues, the steam continues to fill every moment, the darkness, the neon lights of chinatown, the music amps up a little and Sullivan gets away. The other thing that makes this scene so interesting visually is that both characters are about the same size and age, they're both wearing similar attire, if looking at it and not seeing their faces you wouldn't be able to tell them apart. It's part of the reason that the scene of the shadows on the brick wall was so great. Given slightly different circumstances, a slight change in either of their lives and these roles could very easily be reversed and Sullivan could be chasing Costigan. It's just a classic, polished, old school, film noiresque cat and mouse scene.

The second scene i'm going to talk about is the scene in which Costigan finally finds and confronts Sullivan. Before that, however i'm going to talk about the brilliance of this gradual buildup. Costigan, after Queenan is about to finally get him free of this, witnesses the Costello gang throw him over a roof to his death. This is jolting and just ramps up Costigan's feeling of being trapped. He's alone now, especially after Dignan resigns. Sullivan, after finding out that Costello is an FBI informant and could inform on him sets him up and ends up shooting him at the end of a massive shootout. It looks like Sullivan can relax a little now. Because they retrieved Queenan's phone Sullivan and Costigan have a little game of silent phone tag until finally Costigan trusts enough to come on in. Things are going smoothly for Sullivan, Costigan doesn't suspect that he's corrupt until he sees an important envelope on his desk that reveals that he is the mole in the department and the person he was trying to find. Costigan leaves, Sullivan realizes what has happened and erases his file from memory. Costigan, as far as SIU is concerned, no longer exists. This symbolizes Costigan's isolation. So on to the scene. They meet on the roof after Costigan tells him that he's got evidence on him and Costigan goes primal. It's a fierce scene. Both characters have been building up tension and fear and it all comes out in this explosive meeting. Costigan gets him, puts the cuffs on and he's not letting go for anything. They're going down in the elevator and Sullivan after continually telling Costigan that he's got nothing, that there's no way that a jury would believe him, pauses and you can see it sinking in how fucked he could be and he says "Just fucking kill me." His body language changes. He's defeated. "Just fucking kill me." Costigan has won. The elevator opens and bam, Costigan is shot. It's sudden, shocking, kinda fucks with you for a second and really throws you for a loop. It looked like Costigan was going to get out of this, have vengeance, be saved and then just like that he's no longer a part of this movie. An ally cop of Costigan's then sees the body and he's shot. All the good guys are going down. Queenan's dead. Costigan's dead. Is Sullivan going to walk away from all of this? The movie ends with Sullivan going back to his apartment after the funeral of Costigan and Dignan is waiting inside the apartment to be the angel of vengeance. He shoots him, walks out of the apartment and the last image we see is a rat on the ledge of the window overlooking the church.

#15 PSYCHO

Whenever discussing a film by Alfred Hitchcock it's important to talk about his love and respect for "pure cinema", cinema told more through images than other elements. He believed movies were a visual medium and that stories should be told primarily through an orchestration of images. He is probably the finest example of a "show me don't tell me director" that there has ever been outside of the silent film era. Because of this his movies feel like no other. When watching a Hitchcock film you are going to be immersed in the story and the environment because of this respect for the visual aspect.

We love stories. Lovers of film enjoy the aspect of the telling as much as the story itself. So much of Psycho's greatness is in it's telling. Now for most people when they think about the film "Psycho" they think of the infamous shower scene, the shock and terror of it. This is an incredible part of the film and i'll talk about that and its result in breaking the rules of classic storytelling in a good way later in the essay but for now I want to talk about my favorite part of the film and the thing that I remember first when I think of "Psycho" and that's the journey to the Bates Motel.

I'm on the edge of my seat with a grin on my face every time I watch it because it's mesmerizing. Hitchcock does a number of things to heighten the intensity of this scene that are against the norm. First of all the use of music is so important. There is this pumped up, unnerving shrieking to the music but not so intense that it's too much. It's just enough to raise our blood pressure and get us amped up like Marion Crane, the protagonist is. For the majority of the car ride the camera is coming from the outside and looking in closely on Marion's tense face rather than a more conventional angle looking from inside out to the road. It creates a feeling of urgency and constriction. We hear all of the paranoid voices in her head as she's driving and it gets us inside her head and the fears and possible repurcussions for what she's doing. All the while the music continues and we stay in on her face. There are other aspects to this scene that are more conventional but handled by Hitchcock with precision. She encounters A police officer on more than one occasion and the first time in particular she is sleeping in her car and the officer comes up to her window and he looks so threatening and ominous in a closeup with dark glasses. He actually means well but his image in her eyes is a mirror of her inner paranoia. Towards the end of her journey it gets dark and begins to rain. This time the camera is looking outside the windshield which is now the perfect decision because we see what Marion sees and she is half blind with the darkness and the rain against the windshield. It just adds to the tension of the experience.

We get to the Bates Motel and shift into the second act of the movie. Marion has stolen the money from the bank that she works at, has made it through a stressful drive in the rain, and pulls off the road when she sees this hotel. We meet Norman Bates, the person who runs the hotel. He's got a spring in his step, seems friendly, innocent, well mannered, and a little awkward socially. All of this is endearing. There's also something a little off about him and this makes him fascinating. This section revolves around the rapport between Norman and Marion. We get to know her a little bit better in her relation to Norman and the conversation that they have in the parlor of the hotel over dinner is such a great scene because we have elements of both of them being intimate with each other, honesty, the realization that they are both trapped and we begin to realize this Norman Bates is eccentric if not a little bit crazy. He is an iconic character in film, the slasher before there were slashers, and he's incredibly watchable. We don't know yet that he's a villain, a killer. We don't realize this until the end. He's just a character unlike any that we've seen and this makes him thoroughly interesting. We haven't even gotten to the big shocker, one of the most shocking scenes in all of film, especially up to then.

So Marion Crane is taking a shower and Hitchcock uses the technique called montage where there a number of quick shots cut together in order to create a mood of tension or panic. She's in the shower and the momentum of this scene is building because we get a fluctuating of quick shots of a close up of the water coming out of the shower head and then a close up of Marion's face with the water coming down. This happens for a number of seconds and what it accomplishes is a feeling of being out of control, panic, suspense because the images are happening so fast and so close up that we can't see anything around us and anything can happen at any moment. There is then a shot of the shower curtain and after a few seconds we see a blurred figure walking into the bathroom and getting larger and larger as it gets closer and closer to the shower and then the mother of all terror, literally. The shower curtain is pulled back suddenly and there is a large female figure standing there and the iconic music kicks in and the slashing begins. The slashing is done very intelligently with quick strokes made to look like they're stabbing her but not breaking skin because that would have never passed the ratings board in those days. We get the sound effect of knife piercing flesh, the knife is slashing close enough to the flesh where it looks like it is stabbing her and we can finish the strokes with our own imaginations. Marion has a look of anguish and terror on her face and after multiple, horrifying stabs she falls to the floor pulling the shower curtain down with her. The camera gets a closeup of water mixed with blood going down the shower drain and later Marion's face pressed against the bathroom floor. The whole movie has been turned on its head and less than half way through the movie our protagonist is dead.

The audience is in shock and the mood lingers. The rest of the film is almost like watching a second movie. Through master manipulation by Hitchcock we now identify with a new protagonist who, unbeknownst to the audience is the killer of the original protagonist. Not only are we identifying with a completely different character than the one who we've been identifying up to now but we're going to really get a shock in the end when we realize that this is the villain, the killer. There is a moment after Norman Bates has cleaned up the crime scene of the murder that he knows his mother committed, and he's watching Marion Crane's car with her body and all the evidence in it slowly sink into a swamp, and we are identifying with him and hoping it sinks; the car that has the dead body of the woman who we've been routing for for the first forty minutes of the movie. We are now routing for Norman to get through this. We feel anxious for him.

The final section of the film involves the investigation of the missing Marion and we get more of the fascinating Norman Bates interacting with Marion's sister, boyfriend, and a detective. The tension just keeps building because these people are snooping around the hotel and house and there is a killer ready to strike at any moment, and also because we are relating with Norman and we feel his tension at being found out because he covered the whole thing up. We feel both of these interlocking tensions and it's exhilerating. There is another grizzly murder at the top of the steps inside the Bates house where the killer comes out of nowhere and we hear the terrifying shrieking music again as the detective is stabbed repeatedly and falls down the steps in Hitchcock's signature falling shot that never gets old.

My favorite shot in the whole movie and one of my favorite shots of all time happens towards the end of the movie as Marion's sister approaches the Bates house. We see the house from a low camera angle looming above her like a villain itself and then the camera angle changes to a high angle shot looking down at her as if it is studying her. Through just two opposing camera angles we truly feel the malevolence of this house. The master of "show me don't tell me."

#48 REAR WINDOW

In your typical suspense movie you're going to get to know your main protagonist and they're going to be confronted with some degree of conflict in which they're going to come closer and closer to resolving or being destroyed by it. If the conflict is another character then we will get to know something about them. "Rear Window" is one of the greatest suspense films of all time because of it's unconventional means of presenting this. Most suspense films involve twists, contrivances, and surprise endings. What's so ironic about this film is that Hitchcock is known as the trickster, the master manipulator, and this story is one of the most straight forward simple plots that you'll ever see but he still manages to be in complete control of a suspenseful, edge of your seat experience because of his technique of telling the story.

So the story is pretty simple. A professional photographer has had an on the job accident leaving him wheelchair bound for a short period of time. In order to pass the time he looks out his window and spies on the neighbors in his apartment complex. While spying he begins to suspect that one of his neighbors has murdered his wife. One of the reasons this movie works so well is that there isn't much of a story structure, plot, musical score, or action. That probably sounds incredibly stupid but for this movie it works wonders. A layer of the veil between movie and audience is removed because the usual elements of what we come to expect from a movie has been removed.

Most of the movie is simple. We are watching our neighbors. Notice I said we. Because there isn't a musical score, contrived storylines for other characters, or a twisty plotline we are simply looking through the eyes of our protagonist and they seem more like our own eyes than we are normally accustomed to while watching a film. We see a very attractive ballet dancer across the way, a pianist who is always throwing parties, a couple who constantly sleeps on their balcony, newlyweds, a lonely, heartbroken woman and others. We hear children playing, dogs barking, a piano playing, arguing, etc. We are watching a typical neighborhood that feels like a typical neighborhood. They are as much in our universe as we are in theirs. It's as if we are sitting in a theatre and looking outside a window at our neighbors and their everyday activity which is not so much dramatic as it is hypnotic. We are entertained by these people in the same way that our protagonist is. If there was something overly dramatic about this neighborhood we'd slip out of the powerful fictive dream that Hitchcock has so masterfully created.

We have this calm, entertaining voyeurizing, and we have an old Hollywood charm, but with a modern sensibility with the rapport between two legends in Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly who play the protagonist and his girlfriend. There is a certain peaceful joy watching two masters play off of each other and that adds to the overall experience of the movie. We have this voyeurizing that slowly builds in tension and in between we have incredibly enjoyable moments between these two characters. The first time we see Leeza Fremont, played by Grace Kelly, she is like a slowly descending angel hovering over the protagonist, L.B. Jefferies, played by Jimmy Stewart. I think most people would have a hard time not falling in love with her right at that moment. She is elegant, playful, and moves with an effortless grace. L.B. Jefferies is irritable, stubborn and sarcastic, but incredibly likeable because of his wit and humor. It's a classic Jimmy Stewart performance. They obviously both love each other but Jefferies believes they are from two different worlds and it would never work between them. He feels like he is constantly traveling, in danger, and she is used to a more refined life. Leeza continues to argue that it doesn't matter that they're two different people, that all she knows is that she is in love with him and wants to be a part of his life. In a perfect example of the conflict of the relationship but also the humor and playfulness they're arguing and Jefferies asks "Did you ever try to keep warm on a C-54 at 15,000 feet and twenty degrees below zero?" Leeza responds with a pout "Oh I do it all the time when I have a few minutes after lunch." I won't talk about it too much in this essay but Thelma Ritter adds another element to the chemistry by doing an amazing job playing a blunt, charismatic spark plug caretaker of Jefferies named Stella. Every word she says is amusing.

So back to the suspense. In the midst of spying on the other neighbors Jefferies also spies on a salesman named Lars Thorwald across the way who will become the focal point for the suspense in the movie. Through nothing more than his naked eye, or binoculars he sees a series of events. At first he just notices the man taking care of his invalid wife and her nagging him. We later see him bringing her dinner and going into the other room to make a phone call. It looks like she overhears him talking to another woman and she confronts him and laughs at him causing him to walk away in disgust. Later that night Jefferies hears a scream and something breaking. We fade to black. He opens his eyes in the middle of the night. It's raining and he sees the man leaving his apartment with a suitcase. We see Jefferies look at his watch. 2am. He nods off and opens his eyes forty minutes later and sees the man return with his suitcase. The man goes out again with the briefcase about five minutes later and then comes back again, once again forty minutes later. Throughout this whole scene it happens gradually and with periodic brief pauses to add to the sense of realism. Everything is quiet except for the sound of rain. We are in the dark and watching this suspicious, potentially scary activity gradually taking place and once again, because of the lack of an involving plot, musical score, cluster of character arcs, it feels so real and in effect so eery. In Jefferies eyes we see more and more concern.

The next morning we once again see all of the activity of the neighbors giving everything a feeling of normalcy, which held against the evenings events makes those events creepier. Here in the middle of all of this is this potential murderer. He doesn't seem evil, he doesn't seem like a killer. He's your neighbor and this removes yet another layer of that veil.

Little by little Jefferies is convinced that this man murdered his wife. The scream, the late night journeys, he sees him wrapping a saw in paper, he has her jewelry. It takes some time to convince Leeza but the fact that he still has her jewelry does the trick. What woman would leave her jewelry behind? Stella is also gradually convinced and the suspense builds. What's going to happen next? How far are they going to go? Can they prove his guilt? Is he really guilty?

The next portion of the film feels much like a silent movie. It is thrilling because we are watching something that we aren't used to and we are in a master's capable hands. The master of visual storytelling gives us a number of silent scenes in which Jefferies is watching both Leeza and Stella in danger and it allows for the use of humor, great tension, and the novelty of a different kind of cinema. In the first among many great shots to come that resemble a silent movie, we see Stella gesturing that she didn't get a license plate, then Leeza and her digging in Thorwald's garden, Stella gesturing that they couldn't find anything and all of this is amusing because everything has to be said through hand gestures, facial expressions, etc. It's incredibly fun to watch. The best of these scenes comes when Leeza decides to adventurously go into Thorwald's apartment while he's not there and look for his wife's wedding ring as proof that he murdered her. For one thing there isn't a thing he can do. He's confined to his wheelchair as are we. We are powerless and tense. She motions that there's nothing in a purse, once again amusing. We suddenly see Thorwald coming back to his apartment. Our blood pressure raises, Leeza hides, and he enters. There is this great shot of him turning around in his apartment and his expression has intensified. We know that he's found Leeza. We can't see her because we only see what Jefferies sees but we know, and Thorwald walks forward, and through the other window we see leeza walking backward. What a shot. There is a terrifying struggle in which Jefferies is suffering in his powerlessness and then the cops come. The end of this scene sees Leeza safe and there is this great playful image of her back to Jefferies at the window flicking her finger back and forth with Mrs Thorwald's wedding ring on it. She has succeeded and it's a great symbolic gesture because here is this woman who wants to marry Jefferies but is seen as not fitting into his adventurous dangerous world and she has just had a dangerous adventure and at the end of it she has a wedding ring on her finger.

In the last and quite possibly scariest chapter of this suspense tale we have a perfectly constructed scene of the villain pursuing the protagonist. Jefferies is sitting in his apartment alone. Leeza and Stella are at the police station. There is a phone call but when he answers it there's no answer. Jefferies is uneasy. Soon after this he hears the downstairs door open and close. He's frightened. From under the door he can tell that the stairwell light has gone out. A few seconds later there is the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Ooooh Daddy. He's terrified now and he's looking for a hiding place. The footsteps stop, the door opens and there stands Thorwald with intimidating intense bug eyes. Bow to the master.

TOP MOVIES OF 2009

1) Avatar

2) Inglorious Basterds

3) Where the Wild Things Are

4) Drag Me To Hell

5) Up In The Air

6) Fantastic Mr. Fox

7) District 9

8) The Road

9) The Hurt Locker

10) Moon

TOP MOVIES OF THE DECADE 2000'S

1) The Lord of the Rings

2) The New World

3) Kill Bill (The Complete Volume 1&2)

4) Avatar

5) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

6) War of the Worlds

7) There Will Be Blood

8) No Country For Old Men

9) The Departed

10) The Mist

Honorable Mention:

Children of Men

Whale Rider

Gladiator

28 Days Later

Million Dollar Baby

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Almost Famous

Spirited Away

Unbreakable

Pan's Labyrinth

The Dark Knight