Three is a Magic Number

Feria Films is turned three yesterday. Today is the anniversary of my first review. We've had some highs and some lows, but nothing's really changed, has it? I just keep seeing movies and telling you about them. I'm no more qualified than I was when I started, but I show up. I show up at the theatre, and I sit back down here. I suppose that's all the qualification I need.

Last summer, a lovely young man asked me for a Feria Films Top 10. It took me a while to figure out what that would mean (within a genre? within a given time period? ever?). I settled on "personally." Below is an excerpt from that list:

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (Collective grade: A)
I know that they are two movies, but I can hardly think of one without the other, much less talk about them separately. Despite all the romances I write about and see, it is these two that best represent both the ecstasy of falling in love and the exquisite pain of losing that love.

Rushmore (Grade: A+)
The more I see this movie, the more I get out of it. Wes Anderson has such a great talent for creating little worlds that are just a slight horizontal shift from our own, for suspending our disbelief with grace and wit, and for attention to detail.

The Yards (Grade: A -)
You must have guessed that I would put at least one Joaquin Phoenix movie on the list. It was a tough call, and my joy over the commercials for Gladiator or my purchases of Inventing the Abbotts , Walk the Line, or Quills doesn't exactly suggest it's the right one. Still, despite the talent he is surrounded by, he owns this movie start to finish, and that final sequence, sitting alone in his car, patiently waiting . . . that's what great cinema's about.

Sin City (Grade: A+)
I love this movie. I love it to the point where I watch it, I watch it again, and then I get up the next day to watch it some more.

Brokeback Mountain (Grade: A+)
Again, tough choice: this time it was choosing an Ang Lee picture. It's not even the only one I own, but I think it's his best work to date. He treats the physical relationship between Ennis and Jack almost reverentially, and that's part of the appeal. Lee is telling a powerful love story, and he brings more humanity to it than any other director could ever dream of doing.