Award season will come to a close with the 97th Annual Academy Awards on March 2, the biggest celebration of the film industry. What better way to honor the celebration than by diving into films about the laughter, love, and tears that go into making films?
Without further ado, here are my Top Ten Movies About the Movies.
10. For Your Consideration (2006)
A gut-busting satire of the machine that is awards season, For Your Consideration looks at what happens when a baseless rumor about Oscar buzz reaches the ears of the cast of a low-budget indie film.
Director Christopher Guest assembles his usual team of comedians (Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, Ed Begley Jr, John Michael Higgins, etc) to lampoon the lengths studios will go to generate some award recognition. Ironically, O’Hara received Oscar buzz for her work as Marilyn Hack and even took home Best Supporting Actress from the National Board of Review.
9. The Player (1992)
Robert Altman is an expert in immersing his audience in a “community” and allowing the dynamics of that community to unfold naturally. That expertise infuses his take on the Hollywood studio with intoxicating dark electricity.
The Player follows a studio executive (Tim Robbins) trying to determine which rejected screenwriter is sending him death threats. The film boasts sixty-five celebrity cameos mixed with numerous references and inside jokes that dig into how ridiculous and dark the studio system truly can be.
8. Teen Titans Go! to the Movies (2018)
Deep in the era of superhero fatigue, the Teen Titans are here with witty, self-aware satire that gets to the root of one of Hollywood’s major trends. With the hopes of solidifying their legitimacy as heroes, Robin and his fellow Titans head to Hollywood to take their cinematic destiny into their own hands. It never punches down on the genre, but it doesn’t hold back either, delivering an ultra-silly and underrated experience with something thoughtful to say about legacy and getting blinded by stardom.
7. Babylon (2022)
Damien Chazelle’s polarizing film is already seeing reappraisal as a misunderstood masterpiece dissecting the transition from silent films to sound. In that transition, Chazelle highlights assimilation as characters at the margins are forced to cut ties with their otherness or risk being cut off from the glitz and glam of Hollywood. While the film drips with opulence, it’s also coated by the melancholia of its characters, desperate to cement their legacy and make themselves immortal in a world that’s so ready to forget them. Yet, amid the tragedy and darkness, Chazelle still manages to find something to celebrate, highlighting what pulls people to this crazy business we call show.
6. Ed Wood (1994)
Tim Burton made a film about the king of B-movies, emulating the style of B-movies from that era. His biographical film about the “worst director of all time” is brilliantly goofy, but there’s also a loud beating heart beneath it. There is a deep, profound love of creation, cinema, and the misfits who find solace in it bubbling beneath the film. What’s also touching is that it celebrates the B-movie as a valuable part of the film industry as opposed to turning their nose at them. Also, Martin Landau’s Oscar win for his performance in this is one of the coolest Oscar wins of all time.
5. Hugo (2011)
Many were shocked when Martin Scorsese revealed he was adapting a children’s book into a feature film. It seemed like such a departure from the gritty, dark work we’ve come to know him for. It turns out Hugo may be Scorsese’s most personal work to date, diving into the life of one of the art form’s pioneers in a sweeping love letter to cinema. Scorsese somehow boils cinema down to the magic it instills in audiences and reminds us of why we started showing moving pictures to begin with.
4. Mulholland Drive (2001)
It’s hard to break down the late David Lynch’s dizzying masterpiece in just a small capsule. Lynch possessed little interest in providing answers after all. But Mulholland Drive offers a Lynchian exploration into persona and the allure of Hollywood. Film is aspirational and provides escape; sometimes, that escape goes too far, and we lose ourselves in the fantasy. Lynch teeters between this dream world and the reality that often chews dreamers up and spits them out.
3. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
If Babylon is about the dark side of Hollywood’s jump into talking pictures, then Singin’ in the Rain is about the endless possibility that comes from the new era. Rather than mourn characters getting left behind in the silent era, we root for newcomers like Kathy Selnick (Debbie Reynolds), whose talent can shine brighter in the talkies. The classic musical soars as we watch these artists push themselves beyond what they thought possible for film and fumble their way through learning the new technology. Gene Kelly’s vision saw Hollywood as an ever-evolving industry that could thrive when we embraced something new.
2. 8 ½ (1963)
Federico Fellini delivers an otherworldly examination of the artistic process and the struggles of meeting industry expectations. Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is a director trying to overcome a creative block while juggling the many women in his life. 8 ½ explores the pressure that comes from being an established artist. Success brings more eyes, which results in more scrutiny and expectations. Anselmi attempts to walk a tightrope of maintaining his artistic integrity and meeting public demand against an ever-ticking clock. The film also presents a daring meta-context by being the very film Guido is working on.
1. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
A ghost story of sorts, Sunset Boulevard sees Billy Wilder examining the idea of celebrity and how fleeting it can be. The ever-iconic Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) floats through her lonely estate, determined to return to her glory days with the help of screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden). Like a few other films on this list, Sunset doesn’t shy away from the bleak reality of silent film stars navigating a post-sound industry and reacclimating to a life outside of the industry. Wilder brilliantly immerses the audience in Hollywood decadence while embracing the darkness of Hollywood—a fantasyland that easily disposes of people they deem useless, especially women of a certain age. Swanson delivers one of the greatest performances of all time as a woman desperately clinging to a world that has washed its hands of her.
List Courtesy of Adam Patla
Image Courtesy of Paramount Pictures via Medium