Thursday Movie Picks: Movies About Making Movies

I'm slowly preparing my entries for the last leg of Wandering Through the Shelves' movie meme (I'm not sure if she will plan to continue it until next year), so if you haven't joined in the fun, there's still a few weeks left! One of the topics that Hollywood hasn't failed in showing us are the behind the scenes look in movies, even if they were fictional itself. I think that at some point, we, the non-film making industry people sometimes want to catch a glimpse of the process it takes to make a movie. While most of the works are fictional accounts, the behind the scene process is actually a great story telling point, as there is a lot of drama that happens off-screen. Here are my picks for this week's theme:

This film took the world by storm by opting to bring us back to a world of silent film. We have all moved on from silent films, so this represents a homage to those days when the film industry was starting to grow. The film presents the conflict from the transition to one style (silent) to the next (talkies), with the pressure growing on Jean Dujardin's character as it was a transition he was reluctant to make. Just like his partnership with Berenice Bejo, their tandem represents the shift of trend. In the end, we do get a mixture of the old and the new blending in together; while we are ready to move to a new phase, there is still a deep appreciation for the past. 

This has got to be the funnest movies-on-movies production I have seen. The lead cast is unbelievably on sync, and the supporting characters/cameos are fantastic as well. I haven't seen Tom Cruise play a character like that, and Matthew McConaughey was fantastic as his short stint as Kirk Lazarus' agent.  You want a funny action movie? This is it.

The movies about making movies point in this Woody Allen film borders on a technicality, as the lead character in the movie (Tom Baxter) walks off the screen, leaving his movie unfinished. It's a film that borders on reality and fantasy, on how movies with their carefully crafted characters can easily take us away to a place where we can forget the state of our lives. I liked Jeff Bridges in this one, and he and Mia Farrow did have good onscreen chemistry.