So, let’s hear it from you! What are your five favorites?
Me? Sigh. As he says, for anybody who loves movies, it’s hard, but here goes:
1. The Philadelphia Story–good God I love this movie. Nobody puts a foot wrong. By turns hilarious and very touching and everybody is great.
2. Mary Poppins–Yes, I said it. I’d say it again if I had to. The recent Saving Mr. Banks did a lot to justify it. Put aside your preconceptions and just let the artistry–and, yes, the whimsy–flow over you.
3. The Maltese Falcon–You’ve got to have one post-WWII hardboiled California gumshoe on any movie list and Samuel Spade is mine. Featuring the holy trinity–Bogart, Greenstreet and Lorre, each doing just what you want them to do.
4. Singin’ in the Rain–See it on the big screen and tell me you don’t love it. Hopelessly meta before anybody thought of such a thing, and the apex of what a studio can do. Gorgeous.
5. A Night at the Opera–Filmed just months before the untimely death of the great Irving Thalberg, everything that the Marx Brothers were was poured into this movie. Slightly sad, because they would never be this good again.
Your turn!
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Singin’ in the Rain
Duck Soup
Manhattan
Back to the Future trilogy
Run Lola Run
far, far too many great ones already mentioned… and yeah, i’ll stick to “favorites” and not necessarily “critically aclaimed” here… and that lends itself to the whole “my favorites as of right now, and not nec for all time” vibe going on… (still, some awesome “all-timers” already mentioned; that’s why the list for me is getting tougher and tougher all the time, to bring up new ones to contribute! :)
to knock off a few sacred cows, how about first…
THX-1138 – last good “original” version i had was on vhs, and that’s a media quickly going out of my personal-library door, so i’m looking for a good DVD-from-LD burn of the pre-digital original. (maybe i’ll get the “official” DVD sometime just for the sake of it, but i want the original, pre-lucas-digitized-and-mucked-up! just like SW… say, disney doesn’t now own “THX-1138,” does it?!?) some may have their “silent running” or “logan’s run” fixation; for me, i think THX fills that gap nicely. (just a wee bit less depressing than, say, a watch of a version of “1984,” or “brazil”). next best “uplifting distopic future” film for me would be pbs’s “the lathe of heaven” (reportedly a predecessor to “overdrawn at the memory bank”!) both to me are seminal (huh! huh-huh-huh) works of the seventies.
hey, just to mention as far as “classic era” sci-fi: ANDROMEDA STRAIN (although it’s super-dated and wouldn’t play well to new crowds probably by any long shot, but it still just strikes deep back into the roots of my filmic psyche)… and, of course, FANTASTIC VOYAGE… c’mon, it’s frickin’ FANTASTIC VOYAGE! gorgeous, if a bit inept, studio sci-fi, from the heart of “austin powers”-era hollywood. (“dig that raquel welch babe, arrr! i’ll take ‘babes specializing in nuclear-physics’ for a thousand, pat…”)
DARK STAR – john carpenter and DAN MF-IN’ O’BANNON’S frickin’ college project… with frickin’ laser beams! really, not ever seen it?? please do… obviously gestated the ideas for the “alien” movies here… along with maybe perhaps, providing some inspiration to douglas adams for writing “hitchhikers guide”… c’mon, -talking bombs?- -arguing- with -talking bombs??- adams’ ideas about comical AIs like depressed robots and overly-enthusiastic doors and cuppa-drink-machines -must- have had a bit of a seed from “dark star”… -this- movie, i truly have probably watched more than any other one (even “buckaroo banzai”). (one of my favorite lines: cyber-food door whines open… “CHICKEN?” door closes; reopens… “ahh, ham!!” :) though forewarning, JC calls it “waiting for godot in space”… it is a slow/stretched-out paced flick. regardless, it’s my favorite flick to put on when i’m pulling an all-nighter, and i get to about 2 in the morning… i just hafta put this flick on. it’s “that movie” i have to put on when it’s after 2am. and so, maybe perhaps my most-rewatched flick ever, ever.
USED CARS – two more sacred cows off the list… zemeckis (mr. forrest gump! back to the future! cast away! roger rabbit!) and spielberg!! (and GD kurt MF russell, for that matter!) well, spielberg only exec-produced or something on this one, but it -does- feel a bit like a “spielbergian-stripes” movie, considering it was from the same era. (unclear though, whether “1941” came before or after?) oh, speaking of which… “1941,” another guilty pleasure… another great on-screen example of what happens when “too much cocaine and talent” collide together…
oh, wait, one more sacred cow… cameron’s THE ABYSS… more the original theater cut than the DC version; i like the DC up till when harris reaches the bottom, then prefer the brevity of the theater edition of his encounter. saw the first showing, opening day downtown, in an almost empty-theater, and one of the best cold-viewing “i don’t know what to expect OH SH** WHAT’S HAPPENING?!?” scene-by-scene as i’d ever experienced, at least at that time. maybe even to this day; every scene seemed to be so “unexpected” as to what was going to come next, compared to any sort of action movie before it… and even after, with cameron’s own “true lies” and “t2”; those both still pale by comparison to my mind (including any of his oscar-winning/complete-world-domination efforts afterwards!) i think comeron really perfected modern-stylized “textbook” moviemaking with that one, “wrote-then-broke the mold” with “the abyss”. HOWEVER, i’d recommend first watching and getting to know the shorter “theater cut” first… i still find the DC third-act addons much too ponderous (although i do enjoy the extra DC edits during first/second acts). when i watch the DC, when i get to the last part with harris interacting with the aquatic-aliens, i ‘re-edit’ back to the theater version in my head… it just didn’t need all the ILM extras, nor the stilted, arch extra dialog and stock-footage to make its point. but, “the abyss” comes about as close to a sort-of sequel to “close encounters” as we will ever get. (and it still takes the award, as far as i can tell, for “hardest film to make”… they took over an abandoned nuclear reactor, for chris’sake, to make it! watch “the making of” if you doubt the sheer engineering effort that went into it… not even “the matrix 2” custom-built highway comes close, i think. we’re talking about getting “the bends” while trying to make a movie, man! ;0)
in case i missed any cronenbergs here, THE FLY (best remake ever, alongside carpenter’s “the thing”)… made jeff goldblum “a thing” himself, and probably his best singular performance ever (he’s goldblum here, certainly, but the -least- jg i’ve ever seen him act). funny enough that it presages goldblum’s appearance and line in “jurassic park”, paraphrasing from memory: “you scientists were so obsessed with whether you -could- do it, you didn’t think about whether you -should- be doing it…” something so real these days sometimes, and also applies so much to the concept of what his character pursues in “the fly.” (electronically scrambling all the molocules inside this chamber, then trying to recombine them in another chamber connected electronically by a cable… “ohhh, what could -possibly- go wrong?” ;0)
and… VIDEODROME… maybe “scanners” is his most notorious from this early eighties era; certainly it was shocking horror, even just via its newspaper adverts! but ultimately, “videodrome” is his most insidious of flicks… just creepy-crawls right up your spinal column and worms up into your brain. just like the “videodrome cancer” postulated in the movie… a must see, but be prepared to be… unsettled (if not running for a toilet or barf-bag to contain your approval of his horrific mastery ;0).
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EXTRA CREDIT: ANY JACKIE CHAN MOVIE EVER… for example, “RUMBLE IN THE BRONX” (certainly his major u.s. crossover hit; if you’ve never seen that one, then you -must as soon as possible!- hilariously entertaining and jaw-dropping for the stunts he can pull) and, another good one, “the big brawl” (an earlier attempt at a u.s. crossover; badly filmed – noticeably out-of-focus shots in some scenes, but nonetheless hilarious and impressive)… also i think it was called, “mr. nice guy” – one where he’s a “kung-fu cook”! put simply, the man should be dead by now, considering the stunts he performed on his own. perhaps the most fearless man on the planet, outside of any military service (and i imagine many country’s military personnel have watched his movies and tried to replicate his moves).
EXTRA CREDIT: THE ATOMIC CAFE: in the vein of “koyaan,” i recommend this – almost mstie-ish glomming collage of government films, educational and military recordings of the aftereffects of nuclear bombs upon humans in japan. -not- at all an “uplifting” movie… but an ultimately spirited rebuttal to the idiocy of uncontrolled, unrestrained (un-regulated!) military might and budget. -still- important… to -keep thinking- about!
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ahh – oh, oh! remembering i wanted to say also… we can’t be mentioning the “evil deads” and such without mentioning raimi’s “reason for existing”… SPIDERMAN (1 and 2… iiiii, won’t mention 3 here). hearing he was going to make these was like hearing that peter jackson was making “lord of the rings”… and he did -not- disappoint (well, again, except for 3 ;0)… and, well except for those interminably long scenes with aunt may. (aunt may: “sighs… it’s tough to be a hero sometimes…” peter, thinking: “aunt may… i’m-SPIDERMAN…” aunt may: “we must all find the hero within ourselves…” peter, thinking: “you been going through my dresser may? i’m-SPIDERMAN!”)… runnerup though, has to be mentioned… DARKMAN. one of the craziest movies ever done… and if he’d never done that one, i don’t think he would’ve ever gotten spiderman to do. thank gawd he did!!!!! :)
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EXTRA CREDIT: FREAKS: a few threads ago, someone mentioned a “cracked” online article about the five “worst” or most horrific movies ever made, and, i would say unfortunately, they chose this one as #1! i say, “nooooooooo….” “freaks” is, ultimately, one of the most beautiful movies ever made, but unfortunately mis-represented, mal-aligned, and mis-understood, apparently even to this day. i wonder why anyone would view this movie -thoughtfully- and not realize that tod browning did not have a mean bone in his body (except for the insidiously-motived “normals” in this story)… as an opening scene presents, we should think of these people as “children… children.” just as we might reach a level of understanding and friendship with our animal “pets,” we achieve an equal level of existence… no one’s life is any more or less important than our own. “love” does not mean some kind of uncomfortable amount of intimacy… just a spiritual “meeting of the minds” that says, “don’t hurt me, and i won’t hurt you. feed me, hug me once in a while… and we can love each other.”
being a pre-WWII flick (heck, pre-vietnam, pre-internet-gen), or maybe more understandably, a “just post WWI” movie, i suppose it’s understandable the inherent xenophobia that this movie evoked in the casual, know-nothing movie-goer is understandable, but these days, to those who are “citizens of the world,” this movie is as heartfelt as, say, “when harry met sally” (oooohh, sorry! those who got rubbed the wrong way with that… sorry, “whms” is another guilty pleasure of mine; it -is- good-hearted and well-intentioned, and has it’s own thing to say about love, at least back then – just a different take on eighties/ninties “yuppie-freaks,” lol.) anyhow, every frame of this movie is a poster; it is so beautiful, even at it’s most “grotesque” (and really, that’s not by much at all – why i take a bit of offense that the cracked writer even included it on their list… what, “irreversible” doesn’t qualify?? ;0)
at my old job, i worked with someone who often bandied with me about this-or-that movie, often butting heads about what was “worthy” – but then, one day we discovered we both shared an incredibly deep love and devotion to this movie. after that point, we often would start quoting entire scenes out loud, line-for-line, in front of befuddled co-workers.
in the end, it -is- the ultimate “human condition” movie – “why do we live? why do why die? where shall we get a bite for lunch? ;0 … and, we love, or at least want to love; can you understand?”… and those who have never truly loved will always be only partly complete upon their life’s journey. “to have -truly- loved and lost” -is- better to having never loved at all; you will never quite be as complete a being.
i was going to compliment others for the mentioning of “black orpheus,” and thinking because it has one of the most beautiful endings ever (and it does!) but, “freaks” may take my prize for “best ending ever”… just for the sweet, simple last lines of dialog: “oh hans… down’t kwy… down’t kwy. i wuv you… i wuv you.” if you don’t cuddle your pet or s.o. weeping happily at the end, i just don’t know what to say to you!
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EXTRA CREDIT: GLENGARY GLENN ROSS: wanna see great, -GREAT- actors chew up rain-blasted scenery, with “chew-em-up” dialog provided a’plenty by a great playwright? then this is your game. if you love “l.a. confidential” like i do (and see others did too upstream) – you must watch this one. multiple times.
EXTRA CREDIT: BARFLY: wanna see great, -GREAT- actors chew up – oh wait, i already did this last paragraph. well, if you’ve never, you must try this one. and you may oddly find it more uplifting than “glengary” (although i hope it won’t put you off of your program! ;), and watch it more times than even that one.
EXTRA CREDIT: HEATHERS: one of the most quotable films of the era, even if you skip the more dated “how very”-style lines of dialog.
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meh… i blew way past five, didn’t i? but that’s what happens when you ask somebody about their favorite flicks… i just ain’t gonna fuss anymore about it and post it as-is. you deal with it! :) (and hope you find maybe some little new gems in there, like i’m getting from everyone else!)
EricJ says (Post 50): “If I said Xanadu was somewhere on my top 10, you WOULD laugh. Usually, I just say it to piss people off.”
Ha! So you DO just say stuff to piss people off. I knew it! We knew it. And now you just admitted it! But geez, dude, most of the other stuff you comment about is interesting, and I agree with a decent amount of things you say, until you mindlessly berate people for no good reason. (No good reason that I can see anyway. Oh well, maybe it’s just because I disagree with you on your most common complaints about Mike and friends.) You are consistent, I’ll give you that. Hee hee! Have a nice weekend, fellow MYSTie! :-)
Yeah, talk about late to the Weekend Discussion party. That would be me…
1. Somewhere In Time
2. Halloween (the original)
3. Disney’s beauty & The Beast
4. Field of Dreams
5. The Alamo (John Wayne version)
Awesome topic. We could revisit this. Maybe as “Odd favorite films that wouldn’t quite make the top 5” or something.
That idea, I LIKE IT VERY MUCH! :D I hope this will be a future topic.