Great movies

Chinatown is a truly great movie. Normally, I don't particularly enjoy older movies -- Chinatown however, is still awesome. Which brings me to the what I think is the first characteristic of a great movie: being timeless. While there are certainly outdated elements (how can there not be in a 40+ year old movie?) it is still as powerful and exciting today as it must've been when it was released. The plot, the wit, the tension, the mystery, the intrigue, the love story, the heartbreak -- they all withstand the test of time.

Next, it has great acting. Truly fantastic acting. Jack Nicholson kills it the whole movie. I'm not usually particularly discerning of the divide between good acting and shitty acting, but even I was able to tell that the acting was terrific.

Third, it manages to have a layered, intricate plot without falling apart. There are so many subtle elements, so many dense and confusing plot twists -- it takes several viewings to really get a hold on everything that is going on. It is accessible enough to make sense and be entertaining upon the first viewing, yet complicated hold a viewers interest in subsequent watchings. But, even with all these plot twists, there are not gaping plot holes or inconsistencies. This is extremely uncommon, particularly nowadays. For example, people say a movie like Inception is a "great" movie. However, there are so, so many inconsistencies and times that the movie contradicts itself that I personally found it to be a pretty bad movie. And then, people are like "but it's a fantasy movie. You go to the movies to escape from reality, it doesn't have to make total sense!" This logic is severely flawed. I agree that movies don't have to necessarily be realistic -- I don't go into a movie like Inception and then get pissed and leave when the world starts flipping around and doing all that weird shit. However, a movie takes you into it's own world for the time that you are watching it. If the world that the movie creates doesn't openly fall back on the rules it has imposed; regardless of how many velociraptors and naked amazon women flying around in spaceships there are, I can deal with it. However, if the rules of the world created are contradicted within the movie, than it is not excused by any claim of the general fantastic nature of the movie. For example, in Inception, we are informed early on that if a sleeping body experiences the sensation of falling, then the person wakes up from their dream. This is a crucial plot element. In the climax of the movie (aka the most important story defining part), the person falls in their dream, and is thus woken up. That's not how it works -- the world defined within Inception said that the waking body has to be falling, not the dreaming one. Therefore, it contradicts itself and is inconsistent with the rest of the story. 

I got entirely off-track there, and in returning to Chinatown, I think the final element of what makes it such a good movie is it's wonderful soundtrack. As a composition major, I understand that it is not hard to write a nice, appealing soundtrack with romantic strings and V-I harmonic shifts. This is what most music soundtracks are -- they are almost interchangeable with each other. However, it is entirely apparent that the music in Chinatown was written with the feel of the movie in mind. Ignoring the fact that it is really beautiful music, it fits the tone of the movie so well -- the sad trumpet melody soaring above the gritty black and white streets as Nicholson's life spirals out of control. It adds an entire new element to the movie.

Oh, and it doesn't have a happy hollywood ending. Nicholson's girlfriend gets shot in the back of the head right at the end, and everyone is just like shit. It's depressing, but it really, really sticks with you. I can recall every last detail of that scene.