Movie – Z (1969)

Question: what film holds the record for the shortest titled movie to ever be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar?  If you answered “Z” then, well, you probably read the title of this post.  While it didn’t win the big prize, it did win Best Foreign Language Film, as well as Best Editing.  Z is based on the Vasilis Vasilikos novel of the same name.  (There is a 2012 film from India also based on the same novel.  Its title is Shanghai.)  The film Z is a political thriller based on real events in Greece in the 1960s.  In fact, the opening of the film has the following statement: “Any resemblance to actual events, to persons living or dead, is not the result of chance. It is DELIBERATE.”

Movie – X (2011)

The 2011 film X seems to be labeled as an “erotic thriller” in almost every description I’ve read of it.  My guess is that the marketing folks figured sex sells and this would be the best way to attract attention to it.  The fact that some reviewers have re-used this term makes me wonder if they watched more than the first ten minutes of it, or if they have gotten so jaded about violence that the only thing that stood out for them was the opening sex scene.  In my opinion, anyone watching this film hoping for titillation will be mostly disappointed.  It’s a dark, violent look at the underworld in an Australian city.

Movie – W. (2008)

I didn’t see the movie W. when it came out in 2008.  By that time I had had enough of George W. Bush and the last thing I wanted to do was watch a movie about him.  When I was planning this One Letter Titles category, though, it was an obvious movie to watch to see if I found it good enough to recommend.  It was probably a good thing that a few years had passed because it allowed me to be able to watch this film with a little bit of detachment.  It’s also a good thing that Director Oliver Stone decided that this wasn’t his chance to take two hours of potshots at Bush, but instead decided to craft a movie that is a relatively even handed look at George W. Bush and his relationship with his father George H.W. Bush.

Movie – O (2001)

The movie O tells the story of O – wait, let me rephrase that – O tells Shakespeare’s Othello story in a modern day high school setting.  This film has nothing to do with the novel by Pauline Reage.  O was the third such film for Julia Stiles in a three year span.  She had first done The Taming of the Shrew (as 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You) then Hamlet in 2000.  After O came out she became known as the “Shakespeare girl” for a while.  Perhaps this bothered her because she has not done a Shakespeare adaptation since.  This film was easily the most controversial of the three.

Movie – M (1931)

Fritz Lang’s 1931 film M is a landmark in movie history.  While he directed other films that are classics (most notably 1927’s Metropolis) this is the film that I consider to be his very best.  It also features the greatest career role for lead actor Peter Lorre – and this is a man who was in almost 100 films, including The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.  M isn’t just some dusty, dated film that is only watched now because of its place in history, though.  It is every bit as relevant and chilling today as it was back when it first came out more than eighty years ago.

One Letter Movies

“A, B, C, D, E, F, G/ H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P/ Q, R, S/ T, U, V/ W, X/ Y and Z/ Now I know my ABCs/ Now what do you think of me?” – Traditional Children’s Song

Doing “V” movies last time got me thinking about all the movies whose titles are a single letter.  When I did a little research I found that pretty much every letter had been used for a title at least once, and some of them had been used several times.

I will be recommending five of these films. I’ve seen two others – 1982’s Q (aka The Winged Serpent) and 1998’s S. – but they were not good enough for me to recommend.  The first is an attempt to do a 1950s style monster movie in the 1980s and the second is sort of a cross between The Doom Generation and the Aileen Wuornos story that is just trying too obviously to be controversial.

As I post the reviews, I will come back and post the links to them here:

M (1931)
O (2001)
W. (2008)
X (2011)
Z (1969)

On to the reviews…