Sunday, September 6, 2009

High Fidelity (2000)


HIGH FIDELITY
DIRECTED BY: STEPHEN FREARS
WRITTEN BY: D.V. DEVINCENTIS, STEVE PINK, JOHN CUSACK, AND SCOTT ROSENBERG
OVERALL SCORE: 10/10

TOP 100 FILMS: #100

Having just broken up with his longtime girlfriend, record store owner Rob (John Cusack) retraces his top 5 romances of all time to figure out how he got to his current situation.

Kicking off my top 100 films review series, is the movie that may just define quiet perfection to me. Ever seen a movie that just has everything work so perfectly well together it's uncanny? When you think back you don't remember that "one" scene that was amazing, you remember the entire film. To me, High Fidelity is one of those very films.

With the perfect cast, the perfect dialogue, the perfect writing, and the perfect directing, High Fidelity is a movie where everything just fell right into the right spot at the right time. It's really impossible for me to explain how much I love this movie, not for what it tries to do, but for everything that it does. It's witty, funny, not afraid to be itself, romantic at times, and highly entertaining. The film launched the career of Jack Black, in my opinion, helped re-establish John Cusack as a leading man, and furthered the careers of Todd Louiso, Iben Hjejle, Lisa Bonet, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Joan Cusack, and Tim Robbins.

The movie doesn't work for everyone, I understand that, but I can't even begin to describe how well it works for me. I love the way it carries itself, I love the obscure movie references (many I had to look up myself). Above all I just love the story. It's generic, and yet unique, old foundation with new age floors. It's got just about everything you'd ever want it to have and more... and that's saying something. In a age of big explosions, slow art films, High Fidelity stands alone as a genre blending film, perfect for music and movie lovers.


An all around great film, High Fidelity has all the fun, drama, and music you could ever want out of a film.

2 better thoughts:

Chase Kahn said...

You know what? I've never seen this...kind of wanted to for the past few months, never got around to it.

Obviously, it needs to change.

Ryan McNeil said...

@ Chase... See it. See it now. No serioulsy - stop reading this comment, get up and go get yourself a copy. You can thank me later.

@ Univarn... One of my all-time faves too, and a movie I could quote endlessly. I was actually surprised how well it worked, since I loved the book so much.

When I found out they were changing the setting of the story from London to Chicago, I was a tad skeptical. Thankfully, it was all handled quit well, and the "Americanization" of the story didn't take anything away from the source material - a book I've read about ten times.

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