(started in yesterday's post, at the bottom...)
25. Fargo
26. Citizen Kane
27. The Corn Is Green
28. Wait Until Dark
29. Midnight Cowboy
30. Taxi Driver
31. What's Eating Gilbert Grape
32. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
33. Misery
34. Cujo
35. Terminator (1)
36. Terminator (2)
37. Predator
38. Pulp Fiction
39. Frankenstein (1931 version)
40. Bride of Frankenstein
41. Young Frankenstein
42. Delicatessan
43. Catch Me If You Can
44. The Odd Couple
45. Animal House
46. Big
47. Beetlejuice
back to work...
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14 comments:
Yay Midnight Cowboy! I also recommend Sunday Bloody Sunday by the same director. Yes there are at least three movies with this title, but I'm talking about the John Schlesinger one with Glenda Jackson (who also rocks).
Tarantino's best movie was the much underrated Jackie Brown, while I'd consider Pulp Fiction much lower on the list. Jackie Brown was a much more grounded movie, rich characters, a career performance for both Samuel Jackson and Robert Forster (one of the great underused and underrated actors). There's this wonderful long take of just Samuel Jackson's face as he figures out that Jackie Brown is screwing him over. Not many directors would have been savy enough to allow that take to run as long as it did, and it totally worked. For that scene alone, it's Tarantino at his best. Tarantino is good with actors, but at his worst his films become bogged down in pastiche.
Terminator I can understand, but Terminator 2? Sure, there was the novelty of the CG at the time, but otherwise, maybe you're not remembering it very well.
Delicatessen: Jeunet before he started making schmaltzy stuff like Emilie. Probably his best.
The Corn Is Green is the first one on this list I haven't heard of. Let me check IMDB...you're talking about the one with Katharine Hepburn, right?
Oh, and I haven't seen Wait Until Dark. That sounds good. I like Alan Arkin.
And I must agree as well with Runaway Train, Sir. Voight and Eric Roberts being awesome. You never see Eric Roberts anymore, and he's 10 times the actor his sister is. Edward Bunker, a great writer about prison life (because he lived it) also wrote Animal Factory which is worth a look. I still haven't been able to get ahold of Straight Time though.
Planes Trains is probably the single good John Hughes movie.
Some good choices mixed with some I can't exactly comprehend, but enough good stuff that I can't say our tastes diverge THAT much.
This is fun.
A Patch of Blue?....
I'm with Mark on T2. Great, scary performance from Robert Patrick; Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Joe Morton are all solid or better; the effects are well-integrated into real footage (something that many movies that followed it didn't manage as well); and the story holds together well and moves at a good clip. It's every bit as good as the first one.
Maybe you're thinking of the third one, 'cause that was lame.
I've never seen Patch of Blue - never even heard of it til now. On Janet's rec, I'll add it to my queu!
T2 is definitely great. Come on, Jed. Ahnuld is the Good Guy now, and it totally makes sense? That was brilliant! Some of the family melodrama with the kid and the foster parents, and between mom and the psychiatrist, that stuff was a bit dreadful, but not enough to make me not include this one in the good movies list.
I'll tell you a movie that was almost great, but something in it was SO BAD that it can't go on my list: SUPERBAD! Because of the 2 cop characters. They were bad enough to get that otherwise wonderful movie blackballed. Too bad too, because McLovin deserves better!
You can handle the schmaltz in T2, but the cops spoil Superbad for you? "I'll be back"? That had to be the cheesiest line at the end of a thoroughly cheesy movie. James Cameron is Mr Schmaltz, and the schmaltz just got worse from there.
Superbad was quite possibly one of the best teenage movies ever made, just shy of Welcome to the Dollhouse. I also recommend The Day Trippers by the same director. The dialogue was awesome and in some ways very believable, or at least truthful. And it had genuine sentiment, which is very hard to pull off, especially in a movie like that. The cops were a little broad, but not a deal breaker by any means. And McLovin. McLovin!
And Welcome to The Dollhouse. You have to see Welcome to the Dollhouse. That movie is pitch perfect 13 year old girl angst.
Animal House makes your list but Superbad doesn't? Animal House? About frat boys? Lets get serious. I'd take My Bodyguard from the same era over Animal House any day. Animal House began a tradition of lame comedies filled with toothless rebellion, the cultural equivalent of mooning the principal, Caddy Shack and Stripes and every other overrated late 70s early 80s boys will be boys comedy written by Harvard graduates. The National Lampoon was long on broad humor and short on satire.
And where are the Marx Brothers on this list? Now that's great and enduring satire. Duck Soup, my friend.
Or if you want to talk 70s, lets talk Paddy Chyefsky. Network. Hospital.
And however you might feel about Woody Allen now, you have to love Sleeper.
You know, Citizen Kane was formally and technically innovative in a huge way, it's a very important film for that reason but the performances are pretty horrible, and they seriously break the show, not tell rule of good writing. Waay too much exposition. What was Orson Wells? 25? His truly great film was The Trial. He's the only film maker to really get Kafka.
And if you're going to put Iron Giant on there, and ignore Disney altogether...
The Jungle Book?
Pinochio?
Everything after Aristocats sucked to high heaven, but those films are truly classics.
Ah, and the Cassavettes catalog, particularly: A Woman Under the Influence, Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Faces.
No one with me on Cassavettes?
And Mike Leigh. You want great English Comedy, check out Nuts in May.
Also in the Leigh catalog (though not strictly comedies, maybe not comedies at all really) Naked, Topsy Turvey, Bleak Moments, Secrets and Lies, Career Girls.
I loves the movies.
You sure do love to argue.
I'll explain this letter better next time I add to it...
Discussion. Friendly debate. But if it's not welcome I won't do it anymore.
Who said it's not welcome? Hell, a lot of people probably come here to read your comments, who am I to diss you? "Argue" is just a word. Like "debate" or "discuss". I hereby officially deliver my personal invitation to you to continue, on a silver platter, via a red carpet, with a dollar bill attached.
TYPO ALERT: What I meant to say was "'ll explain this LIST better next time I add to it..."
"I'll" !!!!!!
I need a vacation. Away from the computer. If it wasn't for this blog and OTR distracting me from the work I'm doing (or should be doing) I might meld with the computer the way that crazy lady's butt melded with the toilet seat!
I concur. For myself. Didn't mean to sound overly sensitive. I need to stop pontificating. For a while at least.
Hey Jed, I enjoy your comments!...and this is for you and Mark...have you ever seen Our Vines Have Tender Grapes ?...really old 1940ish...Edward G Robinson and Margaret Obrien...
Never heard of it. Neither has Netflix :(
25. Fargo
26. Citizen Kane
29. Midnight Cowboy
30. Taxi Driver
32. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
33. Misery
35. Terminator (1)
36. Terminator (2)
37. Predator
38. Pulp Fiction
41. Young Frankenstein
44. The Odd Couple
47. Beetlejuice
These are the movies on your list that I have seen and which didn't totally burn like vomit in my esophagus. I would watch these movies more than once, or have done so.
Thank you Janet. I probably dominate a little too often, and I'm sorry for that, but it's nice to hear that they're being read.
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