Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

I have watched “Lawrence of Arabia” many times, but I have never *seen* it in 70 mm as it’s meant to be adored. That said, my recent TV viewing left me awed again. This epic turned razor sharp history lesson is indeed one of the greatest films ever made. It’s cinematography of endless deserts and massive (pre-CGI) battles involving men on horseback charging trains, and Peter O’Toole as Lawrence standing before the sun remains unmatched. O’Toole is T.E. Lawrence, the Brit cartographer who becomes a war leader, leading hundreds of Arabs (our naïve English term put upon hundreds of tribes, unasked) against the Turkish Empire during World War I. That’s a slice of the story. When director David Lean depicts mad Lawrence leading “his” army into Damascus, only to lose the city to chaos, it plays out as foreshadowing of America in Iraq. Lean goes brilliant as we watch Lawrence “grow” from a speck on the horizon to filling the screen, blotting the desert out in paranoid close-ups. Draw your own conclusions on who this man might be now. I love this film, historical in every way. I hope to see this in a theater one day. A+

Paths of Glory (1957)

“Paths of Glory” is Stanley Kubrick’s dramatization of a doomed French army attack on a German-held hill during World War I, and the immoral trial that follows where three soldiers are accused of cowardice. Or, rather, not sacrificing themselves for country, God, and their general’s careers. Kirk Douglas plays the defense attorney turned Army colonel who survives the ill-planned attack and will damn himself rather than see one of his soldiers die for false pride. This is pitch-black, dead serious satire, a liberal’s film from the go as it eviscerates the essence of war and the military brass that strategize in palaces while their men die in muddy trenches. Kubrick’s direction is tight and powerful, there’s not a wasted scene in this razor-sharp film. His long tracking shots along endless trenches are breath-killing claustrophobic, nailing what must be the true fear of battle, where doomed men debate how they will go out: bomb, bullet, or knife. A scene where a sociopathic general berates to a soldier, “there’s no such thing as shell shock,” slices hard. American hero Patton did that. This film is no fantasy, but depicts a true, terrible story. A+

A Dangerous Method (2011)

When David Cronenberg -- master of exploding head psychological atom bombs, and violence mixed with sex – said he was making “A Dangerous Method,” the ménage a trois between pioneer head-shrinks Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, I was stoked. I wanted envelopes torched, singed paper ashes blown in the faces of prudes. So count me wanting, put out, so to speak. Except for a few wha? spanking scenes, “Dangerous” is all talk, and I should not be surprised, as this was once called “Talking Cure.” Our focus is on Spielrein, German Jew, wealthy, and hysterically mad, put in the care of Jung (Michael Fassbender), the protégé of master head doc Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Sabina bends Jung’s tight-starched collar, and Freud feuds, and Word War I dawns, and Jung’s last scene has him going like Michael Corleone’s last scene in “Godfather, Part II,” lawn chair and all. No burning desire, no passion. Talk. Knightly’s accent grinds, and Mortensen’s Freud has all the zing of Ask Jeeves, so it’s Fassbender’s show, and he’s damn good, but a notch below “Shame,” the 2011 sex-obsessed flick that’s all dangerous method. B-