corey dry

The last installment. Professor Corey’s Honor Society (Part 3).

21. Favorite Nicholas Ray Movie.

    Rebel Without a Cause (1955). For Dennis, Sal, and Jim.

22. Inaugural entry into the Academy of the Underrated.

    The first Casino Royale (1966) if only for its inappropriate and confused gender in Fleming’s bad French. It is the first movie I can remember going to that I knew something about prior to seeing it. It’s also a huge, cheesy, self-indulgent mess.

23. Your favorite movie dealing with the subject of television.

    Hands and guns down, Videodrome (1983). Brian O’Blivion: The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena: the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.

24. Bruno Ganz or Patrick Bauchau?

    Another tough choice. Ganz is great in Wenders, especially in der Amerikanische Freund (1977), but my favorite role of his is as Jakob Nüssli in Der Erfinder (1981, The Inventor), where he is haunted by a monstrous vision that turns out to be a tank. On the other hand, Patrick Bauchau is fantastic in der Stand der Dinge (1982, The State of Things).

25. Your favorite documentary, or non-fiction, film.

    Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March: A Mediation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation (1986). It even has a linguist named Winnie in it.

26. According to Orson Welles, the director’s job is to “preside over accidents.” Name a favorite moment from a movie that seems like an accident, or a unintended, privileged moment. How did it enhance or distract from the total experience of the movie?

    The helicopter that crashes in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978). It actually was an accident. Then, of course, there is the final, un-Wellesian scene in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) where Orson comes unstuck in time and shuttles back and forth between Paul Mason wine commercials and the upside-down, dying Cardinal Wolsey scene in A Man For All Seasons (1966).

27. Favorite Wim Wenders Movie.

    I would have to say der Amerikanische Freund (1977), but I’ve already played that card. Second up is a tie between Im Lauf der Zeit (1976, Kings of the Road) and Paris, Texas (1984). They’re both road movies. Somehow the zone along the former border between East and West Germany and the US Southwest work well as third characters in both films.

28. Elizabeth Pena or Penelope Cruz?

    Both equally.

29. Your favorite movie tag line (Thanks, Jim!)

    The movies: now more than ever.

30. As a reader, filmgoer, or film critic, what do you want from a film critic, or from film criticism? And where do you see film criticism in general headed?

    Consistency and audacity and passion.