Ace in the Hole - MatthewHunt

A thoughtful, affecting contemporary western with Kirk Douglas as an old-fashioned outlaw: a
lone horseman pursued by sympathetic sheriff Walter Matthau's helicopters and jeeps. The
formerly blacklisted Dalton Trumbo's script is an elegy to a vanished time, while Philip
Lathrop's stark monochrome photography is bleakly stunning.
The Long Good Friday
(John Mackenzie, 1980)
A state-of-the-nation movie about the manners and morals of emergent Thatcherism,
cunningly disguised as a brutal British gangster thriller. Bob Hoskins' gangland boss
completely reinvigorated a stale archetype, and the film, like Performance and Get Carter,
demonstrates the neverending versatility of the British gangster genre.
The Long Goodbye
(Robert Altman, 1973)
Altman revamped the detective noir by relocating private eye Philip Marlowe to the drugaddled
and materialistic California of the Me Decade, where he's beleaguered by criminal
charges, mob entanglements, and a very cranky cat. Altman's whimsical feat of genre
deconstruction is a stoned and wondrous dream of a movie.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
(Peter Jackson, 2001-2003)
Tolkien's fantasy epic was widely held to be unfilmable, but with advanced special effects, a
bit of Kiwi know-how and a country that would double as a stage set, Jackson pulled it off.
The scale is breathtaking, but the movies are finely crafted down to the smallest detail.
Lost in La Mancha
(Keith Fulton And Louis Pepe, 2002)
Strange as it is to see a making-of documentary with no completed film, this shows just how
much of a juggling act it is to get a movie made. The story of Don Quixote had previously
flummoxed even Orson Welles. Terry Gilliam's giggle turns from joyous to unhinged as his film
is brought to its knees by illness, incompetence and, apparently, an angry god.
Lost in Translation
(Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Two people are lost, and they find each other, albeit briefly. Young bride Charlotte (Scarlett
Johansson) has tagged along with her antic photographer husband to Tokyo, where she's
lonely and adrift. Bob (Bill Murray) feels much the same, with an added dollop of
embarrassment, as he's in town to make a cheesy liquor ad. Charlotte and Bob happen to
meet one night because neither of them can sleep; they spark a friendship, and then they part
on bittersweet terms. That's all there is and all there needs to be in Lost in Translation, a
gossamer portrait of dislocation, regret, and cautious hope. Sofia Coppola's mood piece
captivates because it's hard to pin down. It's not a straight drama, but it's not really a comedy,
either. It's romantic, but it's not a romance - at least, not a consummated one. The jet-lagged
protagonists seem to regard their surroundings as a strange dream, full of longing. And each
stands on a threshold: Bob's midlife impasse is the counterpart to Charlotte's youthful identity
crisis, and both of them are struggling to wake up to discover just who they want to be.
Jessica Winter
The Lost World
(Harry O Hoyt, 1925)
To give you an idea of both how revolutionary and of how old this film is: Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle and Houdini previewed cuts of the dinosaur footage to an amazed meeting of the
usually-skeptical American Magicians Society. The work of animator Willis O'Brien, who later
brought King Kong to life, adds immeasurably to what was already an incredibly entertaining
adventure yarn.