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Last night was "Action Movie Night" at The Braeburn Condos theater, and it was Shobhit's choice—his third. When he had his first choice, he didn't spent a lot of time thinking about what to choose, and just went with an okay-movie he was already interested in that happened to be streaming on Max, called
Mojave.
For his second choice, though, Shobhit threw basically any normal consideration among the rest of the group out the window, with one specific element of an angle: others had been sharing movies that had some specific meaning to their cultural heritage. So, Shobhit pivoted to go uber-on brand and chose one of the most famous Bollywood (famous in India, anyway) movies of all time, called
Awaara. Being from the early fifties, the general consensus—without anyone making any official audit of the Action Movie Night film history—was that this broke the record for the oldest movie ever chosen.
Well, Shobhit made a choice last night that broke that record yet again: he decided on
Casablanca, which was released in 1942. He had been trying to decide between that and
The Maltese Falcon (which also would have broken the record for oldest movie chosen: that was released in 1941), and I felt either of them were a good choice. Ultimately Shobhit chose
Casablanca because it was available to stream at no extra cost on Max, and I would have had to pay four bucks to rent
The Maltese Falcon on Prime Video.
Casablanca struck me as a very on-brand choice for Shobhit, though, while also being a compelling choice to the group overall. Nobody complained about
Awaara—everyone in the group is very gracious—but it still clearly stood at a further remove from the group overall, being an international feature in Hindi with subtitles, containing no real action sequences at all, and being much more concerned with romance.
Casablanca, on the other hand, clearly leans into the romance and also has no real action sequences, keeping it squarely on-brand for Shobhit, but it's a movie that still appeals to a cross section of people who would not otherwise be interested in romantic movies.
Casablanca is dense with details that really transcend romance, a fascinating specimen of a film that is largely about World War II but released in the middle of it raging, two years before it ended. It's also packed with famous lines many people who haven't even seen the film would recognize.
I had previously given the film three out of five stars on Letterboxd, but I found myself much more impressed with it last night, and changed the rating to four and a half stars. I kind of feel like that movie is one that seems like a better film the older you get. I thought it was excellent, in spite of how much I found difficult to follow in the first ten minutes or so. (Had I been able to keep the closed captions on, especially with all the thick accents going on, that would have helped, but this group prefers they not be on, and I turned them off right after I started the movie on my laptop.)
When it ended, the group did seem to have enjoyed on, overall. And we had a pretty good sized group this week, ten people total: Tony, Jake, Ryan, Joe, Chris B, Derek, Daniel, Brtine (pronounced like "Britney"), Shobhit, and myself.
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I had thought I might share this with the group, and then never did. But, I actually wrote up a list of where
Casablanca rated on several different "all-time best movies" lists, so I will share that here:
American Film Institute's Top 100 movie list from 2007: #3 (behind
Citizen Kane and
The Godfather)
Top rated films of all time on MetaCritic: #11
Top rated films by users of IMDb: #47
Sight and Sound top 100 list from 2022: #63
Top 250 narrative films on Letterboxd: #152
As lists of this sort diversify over time, it's hardly surprising that
Casablanca, a very classic American noir from a White perspective, should start dropping from so near the top spot—I would bet anything that if AFI finally released another updated list, it would not longer be so close to the top as #3. Regardless, it ranks impressively in any one of the above lists; even the 152nd-best film
of all time places it far ahead of the vast majority of films ever made, and Letterboxd is just user ratings as opposed to critical consensus. (Honestly #11 on MetaCritic is stunningly high.)
It's also nice when a movie so beloved by audiences and critics alike still holds up and remains a genuinely entertaining watch.
The only thing really detracting from my experience last night was the guy who sat two seats over from me, who had arrived shortly before the movie started, and brought a full plate of food to eat in the theater while the movie was running—
twice. This wouldn't matter so much to me except that he was a loud eater, often chewing with his mouth open. I had been so relieved when he finished his plate, only for him to go get seconds. And he had shared earlier that he had just come from a talk where a bunch of food had already been offered. I want that guy's metabolism. Jesus Christ.
Anyway, we have enough regulars these days that cycling through everyone getting a movie choice means that, on average, any one of us gets to choose a film twice a year. I've already got a list of nine pending choices, which would take four and a half years to get through. I'm pretty sure what I will choose when it's my turn again, though, which is set to happen in April.
Oh, side note: there was an unusually large amount of food last night. Shobhit made two dishes, both a pasta dish and a seasoned baked sliced fingerling potato dish, to burn through one of the four 1.5 lbs we bought at PCC after Shobhit picked me up from work, to take advantage of a deal on them at half price. Three people brought pizzas: Tony brought one; Chris brought two; Britne brought
three. Shobhit and I both really threw caution to the wind last night and had several slices of the pizzas, I think four of which were vegetarian. And that was on top of the delicious pasta and the potatoes we had brought ourselves.
I was up two solid pounds this morning. I had already eaten too many doughnuts at work. Yesterday was a bad day for reasonable portions.
— पांच हजार पांच सौ पचास —
[posted 12:31 pm]
