Ace In the Hole

In June 2007, The Guardian published a list of 1,000 films one must see before dying. Although I do not agree with all of the films featured, the list differs from all the other such compilation, where you basically get the same 1000 films, give or take a few.

Here are some that I have never even heard of. I started watching them a while back and this is as good a time as any to share my thoughts. So, in the upcoming days, weeks and months I will review films that may not be fresh in my memory anymore but appear on the list. Look for the label 'guardian1000' to follow.

Some I simply refuse to watch (nobody can tell me that I simply must watch Ace Ventura before I die and keep a straight face), some I have watched and hated (I will tell you about them), some I have not been able to track down (yet).

The list is alphabetically and the very first must-see film is Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole.

Here is the first I had never heard of before, not being the biggest Billy Wilder fan (or, not yet). I am actually grateful for the suggestion, because this is really good - and a hint of what was to come in journalism (*cough* *cough* Murdoch *cough*).

Kirk Douglas plays a journalist that recently fell from grace with the big newspapers in New York. While holed up in New Mexico, he stumbles upon a story that carries the promise of getting him back on top.

A young man is trapped and hurt inside a local mine and Douglas is the big-shot on location to milk the story for all it's worth. And we know that trapped miners make for good sob stories.

Somewhere amid the town fair-like atmosphere and the profit seekers, Douglas loses any kind of morals he had and delays a rescue mission for the good of the story. Too late he realizes that he has essentially contributed to the miner dying and that's no good because he really needed a happy ending for his orchestrated story.

Billy Wilder himself considered this the best film he'd ever made.

7/10